“No, how many?”
“12,622. What do you reckon?”
“Fantastic,” conceded Pigeon.
“They cost me a fortune, and now with CDs nobody’s interested. Every day someone comes with a box of records and gives them me for nothing.”
“What do we have to do to listen to Violeta’s?” the Count implored.
Rafael took his glasses off and rubbed them on his shirt-flap and the Count was shocked to see he hardly had any eyes. The sockets were two deep round holes, like bullet holes, darkened by the circles from the bags obscuring his mulatto skin. When he put his glasses back on, the man restored his wakeful owlish eyes and the Count felt relieved.
“I never lend my records, books or press cuttings. As you can imagine, people have nicked things hundreds of times…”
The Count’s brain began to spin in search of a solution. Come back with a record player? Bring a needle for Rafael’s system?… Or leave something in lieu?
“How about this for a deal? We’ve got seven boxes of books in our car boot you won’t find anywhere else. I’ll swap you the book of your choice for Violeta del Río’s record…”
Rafael’s unreal eyes glinted wickedly.
“Good books?”
“They’re something special, believe me. Take a look and chose the one you want. Come on.”
The Count stood up and held a hand out to Pigeon, wanting the car keys. The look on the young man’s face showed his disapprovaclass="underline" that whim could cost them dear and, as Yoyi swore, you shouldn’t gamble your children’s food away – though he had none and didn’t intend having any. The suggestion brought Rafael to his feet and they went into the street.
Pigeon opened the boot and pressed a button to switch on the light. Like any bibliophile stricken by the bug, the musicologist didn’t hide the desire aroused by boxes stuffed with books and, turning to the Count, he checked: “Whichever?”
“Uh-huh…”
The musicologist inspected the books one by one, slowly, lifting them up level with his face, just a few inches from his spectacles, as if he needed to smell rather than see them. He lingered over some of the tomes he greeted with sporadic cries of “How wonderful!”, “Christ, look at this!”, or a self-satisfied shout of “I’ve already got this one”. Finally, when he’d spread all the copies over the carboot, Rafael focused his desire on the original 1925 edition of The Crisis of High Culture in Cuba, by Jorge Mañach, and another first edition, from 1935, of The Universal History of Infamy. Borges or Mañach? he tried to make his mind up and, sorrowfully, stretched out a right hand and put Mañach’s essay back in one of the boxes he’d just emptied, while he patted his newly acquired copy of the Borges classic.
“Right then,” he declared, as he caressed the book’s spine, seemingly more frustrated by his inability to have them all than satisfied at being the owner of a rarity half the world was after, “let’s get that record.”
28 October
My dear,
Dawn brought rain today. It was a gentle, persistent rain, as if the sky was weeping and had no intention of stopping, so profound was its grief. God must know I have not seen you or had any news for thirty-nine days. Did you realize that? I never thought this would happen, but I have learned over the years that we often grow in strength, and have a strange, hidden capacity to resist the hardest blows, which compels us to keep on.
Tell me, how do you feel? I hope you have fought off the migraines that tormented you so in those last months and have new worries to occupy you, which must be both a blessing and a risk: the blessing being that time will not drag so and the risk that you might welcome the relief resignation and oblivion bring…
The cyclone that appeared to be heading towards us swerved and thankfully passed us by, its gales never touched us, though it did leave this rain in its wake. I had prayed to the Virgin: you know how afraid I am of hurricanes (I must have inherited that from my father, poor man, who trembled at the mere sound of the word cyclone). And, I must say, we have quite enough to deal with, if not too much, with the other whirlwind that has hit the country. There is something new every day, a new law is passed or an old one repealed, someone talks for hours in front of a television camera while another silently departs (many of your old friends, your university colleagues have left), or somebody renounces what he once was (some of these were also friends of yours), wraps himself in the flag and swears he was always a patriot (though he had never done anything to show it), and publicly salutes the freedom and national dignity we’ve finally been given, or so they tell us. We’re living pages of history that are too turbulent: everything is collapsing and new myths are being thrown up; heads roll and things are being renamed. As in any revolution. As a distant witness, with no need to leave the house, I think I have a better view of all that’s happening outside and for the first time I fear the situation may take a really tragic turn and, above all, become irreversible. Is it the definitive end to our world?
If you had been able to read it, you would have noted in my previous letter how I decided not to mention things that were too sad. But I think so much, all alone, that I need this confession where I can empty out my soul, and you are the only possible destination. I still think that everything that happened, before your departure, was a cruel blow from fate whose hand you were trying to force and which rebelled, like a curse, to remind you of hallowed alliances. I know: horrible thoughts have passed through your mind and most blame me for what happened. But, knowing me as well as you do, you will not find in your brain (if you are fair) and much less in reality the slightest reason to persuade you I was in any way guilty. What is more, my love: I now believe that nobody is guilty. Life simply tried to correct a deviation and return things to their original place, from where they should never have moved. I know your grief and anger will last a long time, but when oblivion begins to erase those feelings, you will understand I am right and see how unfair you have been to think I was guilty of something which you know only too well, I couldn’t even imagine: the act of causing the death of another person is an act I could never commit, whatever the humiliations and grief I have suffered, whatever the grief inflicted on me by that person’s existence and her undesired presence.
You know that, because of you and your love, I agreed to play the saddest of roles and defer my desires and rights when you embarked on the most ridiculous affair in your whole life. To love her was to kill me. You knew that but didn’t hold back. Often the heart sends out orders when the brain should exercise common sense (something I know only too well) and nothing can resist these orders, although there are times when one has to curb feelings to reach a truth that is just.
3 November
My dear:
Here I am, again.
I left the house yesterday, for the first time since you left. That outing has given me strength to resume this letter I broke off a few days ago, numbed by grief that brought tears and made my hands shake.
Can you imagine where I went? I hope you can, because I did it for you. It was All Saints Day and, as was our wont, I visited the graves of your parents and grandparents, and took them the flowers you liked to place in their pantheon. It was a strange experience because it was the first time I’d done this without you. It was even more difficult because your son came with me. I was afraid to go alone, to go out into a world I feel is increasingly hostile, and, once in the cemetery, the poor boy didn’t understand why his mother cried as if we were attending the burial of a loved one who had recently died. Happily, he doesn’t know and doesn’t suffer. He just thinks I am going mad because I weep over the graves of people who died so many years ago.