Miki smiled and held out a hand. The Count gave him the last cigarette from the packet he then crumpled into a ball and lobbed at the window.
“That LP is really good, right?” asked the writer, enjoying the smoke from his cigarette.
“Hey, Miki,” asked the lieutenant, looking his old schoolmate in the eye, “was that record of yours at high school just another of your lies?”
He never heard the bullet, and first he thought, my waist’s been opened up, but hardly, because he lost his balance, and by the time he hit the ground he was already unconscious, and he only recovered consciousness two hours later, when he learned what real pain was, when he was flying in a helicopter to Luanda, with a drip in one arm, and the doctor said: Don’t move, we’ll soon get there, but he didn’t need to be told, for he couldn’t move any part of his body, and the pain was so intense he passed out, and his next memory was from after his emergency operation in the Luanda Military Hospital.
Once he’d heard that story, the Count repeated it to himself so many times he’d turned it into a film and could visualize every detail of the sequence: the way he fell facedown on the hot sandy ground that smelled remotely of dry fish; the sound of the helicopter, and a very young doctor’s pale face saying: Don’t move, the 0187 is about to land, and he could also see the inside of the aircraft, he must have felt cold, and remembered seeing an immaculately white cloud scud by in the distance.
After he’d had another operation in Havana, Skinny told him the story of his only engagement with an enemy he’d not even seen. Josefina looked after him by day, and the Count, Pancho, Rabbit and Andrés took it in turns by night and chatted till they fell asleep and even Mario Conde convinced himself that that had been his war, though his hands never held a gun and the face of his enemy was self-evident: a bedridden Skinny. He already knew it was unlikely his friend would walk again: the easy, carefree, cheerful relationship they’d enjoyed till then had been tarnished by a feeling of guilt the Count never managed to exorcize.
“Why do you have to get like that, you wild man?”
“What do you expect me to be like after what those wankers did to you? The cowardly assholes. And when they lost on Saturday I imagined this was coming, because it seemed that luck was on their side but they couldn’t score and left everybody on base and the Vegueros won with just a couple of ridiculous runs. And feel pleased you didn’t see today’s game: they belted fifteen hits in the first inning, went ahead nine-one, and in the second, the one they really had to win, they lost nine-zero. Hell, how can you spend your whole life waiting for these wankers to win a championship when they always open their legs like hookers when they really need to concentrate on winning? But I get like this because I’m an idiot, I should just give up watching bloody baseball…”
“So you don’t want a shot of rum?”
“Take it easy, Count, take it easy. Give it here,” and he grabbed the glass the Count had put next to the ashtray, as if making a real sacrifice.
“Hey, and what got into you, buying rum?”
“Conde, I’m in a right state. Either you drink rum or piss off as if I’d never seen you.”
“I’ll drink rum, but let’s change the subject, because I’m not the team manager, right?”
“If you say so.”
Skinny poured himself another shot and seemed to have declared a truce. His deep breathing returned to normal.
“How you getting on with the Rafael thing, my brother?”
“It’s getting better. We’ve got a good lead.”
“Did you see Miki?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve just come from his place. He was really odd. I thought he was more in need of a priest than a policeman.”
“And did you forgive his sins?”
“I consigned him and his three books to hell. For being a liar and a bad writer. Pour me some more, quick.”
“And what’s the lead?”
“That lots of money passed through Rafael’s hands and he’d probably run into difficulties with finances at the enterprise. Guess what the bastard did when he picked up a chick? He’d tell her his name was his department head’s: see the kind of dick-head our pal is.”
“We’d all do the same, kid,” replied Skinny, gulping his rum down anxiously. The Count did likewise and didn’t even think how good the rum was. “You had something to eat?”
“No, I don’t feel like food. Let me down a few shots and then go to sleep.”
“Did you see the twin today?”
“Yes, around midday. Nothing new to report. I drank two whiskies with her…”
“Yours is a hard life, isn’t it?”
The Count opted for another rum rather than to start another argument with Skinny. That’s what he’s after, the bastard, he’s lost it after the baseball, he told himself, and used his feet to take his shoes off. He was beginning to feel comfortable, slumped in an armchair, Jose was looking at television in the living room and he suddenly remembered the Mamas and the Papas and felt an urgent need to listen to music.
“I’ll put something on,” he said and walked over to the sideboard where the cassette player stood. He opened a drawer and studied the cassettes Skinny had numbered and put in order. The complete Beatles; almost all of Chicago and Blood, Sweat and Tears; several tapes of Serrat, Silvio and Pablo Milanés; and one of Patxy Andión, selections from Los Brincos, Juan and Junior, Formula V, Stevie Wonder and Rubén Blades. What a mixture, hell, and he chose the tape of a record sung in English by Rubén Blades that he’d given Skinny as a present. He switched on the deck, gulped down a generous measure and poured out Skinny and himself some more rum. Now the pain had gone from his back and butt that had been tortured by Miki’s armchair.
He liked that record and knew Skinny did, and they felt morbidly carefree singing the ballad “The Letter”, the epistle a friend writes to another who knows he’s going to die, and they drank and drank like thirsty pilgrims. The bottom of the bottle was beginning to show; and Skinny moved his wheelchair over to the glass cabinet and pointed to the pint left over from the day before, and they thought great, we’ve got another pint of rum, we can handle it, and they wanted to down all that alcohol.
“This rum’s delicious, right?” asked Skinny, smiling.
“You’re coming out with the usual drunken shit.”
“But what did I say wrong, kid?”
“Nothing, that it’s good rum blah blah. Of course it’s good, you beast.”
“And what’s this drunken shit? You can’t open your mouth in this place now…”
He protested and started drinking again, as if wanting to clear his throat. Mario looked at him and saw a man so fat and so changed he didn’t know how long he could count on Skinny, and the residue from all his nostalgia and failures started to rise to his brain as he tried to imagine Carlos standing up and walking, but his brain refused to process that pleasant sight. And it was the last straw.
“When was your last embarrassing moment, Skinny, I mean really embarrassing moment?”
“Hey, kid,” Skinny smiled and held his rum up to the light, “so I’m the pickled one around here, am I? And what are people who start to ask such things – cosmonauts?”
“Kid, try to be serious.”
“No, you beast, I don’t make a habit of counting these things up. Living like this,” and he pointed to his legs but smiled, “living like this is embarrassing enough, but what do you want me to say?”
The Count looked at him and nodded, of course, it was embarrassing, but he knew how to set things straight.
“What was your most embarrassing moment?”
“Hey, just what are you after? You tell me yours.”
“Mine… Wait a minute. When I was learning to drive and turned into a service station, I braked badly and knocked over a tank containing fifty-five gallons of petrol. The bastards there all clapped.”