“Well, of course, apart from the photographer, as I remember it now, let’s see… well, I told you Katy Barqué knew her. And she was a friend of Lotus Flower, that blonde who danced almost nude in the Shanghai and then set up her own whore-house. I know they were friends because that day in The Vixen and the Crow they sat at the same table and talked to each other for ages. Another guy who must have known her, because he knew everybody, is Silvano Quintero, the El Mundo journalist who wrote about the showbiz scene. But I never discovered who the guy with the big money was. It didn’t make any difference to me… Although you bet he was from a well-heeled family and, if that was the case, flew the nest, probably with Violeta, for sure. If the man really was, say, fifty when that… if he was alive he’d be my age and not many of my generation are left, I don’t think any… Hell, I once read, and have never forgotten it, that man’s greatest misfortune is to survive all his friends. I don’t know if the guy who wrote did so from personal experience, but I tell you he was right… Every morning, when I open my eyes at five o’clock and see I’m still here, I ask myself the same question: ‘Rogelito, how long are you going to keep fucking around?’ I’ve reckoned for quite a time that death’s the only thing I’ve still to do in this life.”
As soon as he got home that afternoon, Conde checked through the telephone directory and discovered, to his amazement, that Silvano Quintero the journalist still existed and lived in Havana, and after ringing him they agreed to meet in his flat on calle Rayo the following day. What time? “Any,” Quintero replied, “I never go out.” On the other hand, it was more complicated to set up a rendezvous with Katy Barqué, until he lied barefacedly and told her about a film a producer friend of his was planning and which would definitely use some of her songs and which, as she must know, would pay very well…
As if driven by a desire he couldn’t put down, Conde opened the old portable record player he’d brought from Carlos’s place the night before and listened to Be gone from me three or four times. He felt Violeta del Río’s raunchy voice penetrating him, tearing his skin, scarred by the blunt needle running across the acetate, and understood the reasons why the other boleristas from Havana’s nightlife in the fifties, especially Katy Barqué who’d never managed to sing that way, were so envious.
Intensely, even alarmingly entranced, more convinced than ever that her voice stirred him that way because it touched a sensitive fibre in his memory, Conde decided to turn the disc over and explore the unknown territory on the dark side of the moon. That side of the 45 promised strong emotions with its title You’ll remember me, the Frank Domínguez song which, from what he knew already, would fit Violeta del Río’s aggressive, despotic style like a lamé dress.
While the record settled after a few initial turns and spluttered plaintively on track to the recorded grooves, the Count shut his eyes and held his breath, allowing his ears to rule over the rest of his senses. As in Be gone from me, the piano introduced the melody and prepared the ground for the voice, as hot and husky as ever, its self-sufficient tone confirming her status as a conqueror refusing to grant the grace of forgiveness:
Conde lifted the arm and then lowered the lid. Something morbid was happening for that voice to stir him to the point of igniting what was an unmistakeably hormonal fire. Can I be falling in love with a voice? he wondered, with the ghost of a woman?, he continued, afraid it might be his first step on the spiral to madness. Refusing the masturbatory solution he frequently had recourse to despite his now unseemly age, Conde opted to stand under the water spurting from his shower and put his trust in its ability to release him from adolescent obsessions and rushes of blood.
His refreshed brain could now review what he’d learnt so far, hoping the encounters planned for the following day with the longlasting Katy Barqué and Silvano Quintero the journalist could clear up the doubt most tormenting him: what did become of Violeta del Río when she abandoned the stage? He’d above all try to find out if the singer’s rich lover had been Mr Alcides Montes de Oca, the last owner and supplier of a stunning library that had put him in such a sweat two days ago. The existence of that press cutting in the entrails of a cookbook would then make sense and begin to explain the possible relationship between those individuals from such distant planets. However, a crucial piece refused to fit the links the Count was making, because Alcides Montes de Oca apparently only took his children with him from Cuba, and Amalia Ferrero was adamant she’d never even heard of the bolerista’s name. Conde realized he’d perhaps made a mistake: perhaps Amalia never knew Violeta del Río, but a woman with another name who’d already retired from a life of music, and he reproached himself for not bringing the singer’s photo along. But the possibility that the faceless lover wasn’t Montes de Oca, but some other man, still remained. Was it possible that after leaving the cabaret Violeta had married, given birth to three children, and lived more than forty years in the deceitful shadow of domestic bliss, between her kitchen and washing machine in a little house in Luyanó or Hialeah? Might she now be a fat, flabby lady with wrinkled buttocks, poisonously embittered because she’d abandoned what she most liked in life? That devastating image killed the Count’s latest feverish ramblings stone dead, although a truth hot from his wild imagination told him he was hallucinating: Violeta had always been the exciting woman in the photo, the unique singer who’d recorded the single, and had been forever and ever. Why did he think so? He didn’t know, but was sure that was the case.