Still surprised by his question, Tamara looked ecstatic, almost not crediting what she’d heard and, telephone in hand, the Count smiled as he heard her say: “Is that what a knock on the head does for you?”
Yoyi Pigeon honked his Chevrolet’s horn insistently and a pensive Count bid farewell to the concrete shapes by Tamara’s house.
“What do you hope to get from the dead man’s sister?” Yoyi asked, after shaking the Count’s hand and shifting the gear lever.
“I’d like the truth, but I’ll settle for any lead…”
“And the old dear in Atarés?”
“I want her to fill in the gaps. She didn’t tell me a number of things. And I don’t think it was out of fear. Too many years have gone by…”
“Are we going by ourselves? I’ve not come prepared. I’ve only got the chain and handcuffs…”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll dare do it again. That’s something I’d like to get to the bottom of… Anyway we’ll take steel bars…”
When they were opposite Amalia Ferrero, Conde once again saw the exhausted, transparent woman he’d met several days ago. The food cure brought by the books seemed eaten away by grief and her sad eyes were hidden from sight by constant blinking. Her fingers were raw, about to bleed, and had suffered from a bout of frantic chewing.
“The police have told me to stop selling books until they finish their investigation,” she said, when she saw her visitors, skipping any polite chitchat.
“We’ve come about something else. Can we talk for a few minutes?”
Amalia’s lids started blinking again, uncontrollably, as she ushered them into the reception room. Conde inspected the closed mirrored doors of the library, and looked in vain for the glass ashtray. What the fuck had one of those two told him about that library? Which one was it? He tried to poke in his memory: the reply wasn’t forthcoming.
“Amalia, I’m really sorry to bother you, but we need your help. The man who came to buy books still hasn’t shown up, although we’ve found other things out and perhaps…”
“What other things?” the woman’s eyes sparked.
“The singer I told you about, Violeta del Río, was really Catalina Basterrechea. She was Alcides Montes de Oca’s lover.”
“It’s news to me… I didn’t know. Didn’t have the slightest…” she answered emphatically.
“It’s strange you didn’t know. She was going to leave Cuba with Alcides. And if you’d made your mind up, you’d have gone together.”
“But I didn’t know… I didn’t want to leave…”
The Count decided it was time to apply a little pressure.
“Your Mummy knew. She knew everything… She sorted out all the red-tape to bury that woman when she committed suicide.”
“Mummy did whatever Mr Alcides told her to do. I told you: she was his trusted help. But I didn’t know…”
“There was a lot of doubt as to whether Catalina Basterrechea committed suicide or was murdered.”
When he said that last word Conde knew he’d touched a sensitive spot. An almost imperceptible physical reaction rippled though her. She was on tenterhooks. Conde hesitated, although his instinct told him to stick the scalpel in and gouge out the dead tissue.
“I still think it odd that you were living in this house, so close to your mother and Alcides, and knew nothing about that tragedy. How old were you in 1960?”
“I don’t know,” stammered Amalia, who blinked frantically, put a finger to her mouth, and tried to restrain herself. “I was twenty. It was decades ago… and I was just a young girl.”
“From what I gathered, you’d started working, joined the union, and accepted a post in a bank, a position in the Federation…”
“That’s true enough, but I knew nothing about any Catalina, or what Mr Alcides did with his life. And what my mother once knew has gone with her madness… Satisfied? Why don’t you go and leave me in peace? I feel very upset,” her voice pleaded; she was close to collapse. “Dionisio was my brother, can’t you understand? He was almost all I had left in this world… My nieces and nephews went. My mother’s dying. Today or tomorrow… And that bloody hole of a library…”
A shaft of light rent the shadows in Conde’s mind and lit up his memory. Amalia had struck a very personal note about the library which might just have opened a way to the truth.
“What’s your problem with the library, Amalia? A few days ago you said something about the library rejecting you and you rejecting the library. Why did you say that?”
Amalia looked at the two men and blinked and blinked. Her voice sounded like an exhausted sigh.
“Will you leave me in peace?”
Conde nodded and accepted their conversation was at an end, convinced more than ever that that house, and in particular the coveted library of the Montes de Ocas, hid the secrets that couldn’t be revealed, that Amalia perhaps thought had been swallowed by her mother’s dementia and the occasionally merciful passage of time.
Yoyi insisted on being present at the conversation with Elsa Contreras – or would it be with Carmen Argüelles? – and the Count thought he had the right: after all, the police still reckoned he was a murder suspect in the present mess the ex-detective was intent on using the past to solve.
“You like the beautiful, expensive things in life, so I can tell you now: you’re not about to see anything pleasant,” said the Count as they drove into the barrio.
“Don’t give me that shit, man, it’s not as if the sight of an ugly old woman is anything out of the ordinary… You know what? I agree with you. The person who killed Dionisio didn’t do it to steal. This isn’t very charitable of me, but I think Amalia knows something, I’d swear to it.”
The Count smiled, when they turned into Factoría.
“No need to swear… I’m going to ask a favour of you now: let me do the talking. Whatever bright thoughts you might have, keep your nose out of it, right?”
“You like being the boss?”
“Yeah, sometimes, man,” replied the Count, when they peered into the yard and found that the place seemed to have recovered its usual rhythm. At the back, the two women from the day before were washing huge piles of clothes, and the Count assumed it was how they earned their living. The music people had chosen blared from doorways, in counterpoint, in open warfare, competing to burst unaccustomed eardrums. One doorstep was home to three men worshipping a bottle of rum on the dirty floor, while a young boy under the stairs was busy washing a pig with water stored in a petrol tank. A black woman, all dressed in parchment white, necklaces dangling from her neck, was smoking a big cigar on the balcony of the upstairs flat, behind a washing line of patched sheets and almost see-through towels. Next to her, a young mulatta, her curly hair fanning out like a peacock’s tail, rubbed her eyes swollen by sleep and scratched under her breasts with mangy pleasure. All the gazes, including the pig’s, followed the steps of these strangers, who, without a word of greeting for anyone, trooped to the back of the lot.
Carmen Argüelles sat in the same chair, in the same position as the previous day, but that morning she had company and Conde presumed this must be the niece who lived with her, as the elderly woman had mentioned. She was fat, coarse, with ballooning breasts and fifty tough years behind her, and was now busily arranging small packets in a bag on the bed.
Conde greeted them and apologized for interrupting; he then introduced his companion and asked Carmen if they could continue their chat.
“I said all I had to say yesterday.”
“But there are other things-”
“What are you after?” blurted out the fat woman.
“This is my niece Matilde,” Carmen confirmed, turning to speak to her. “Don’t worry, you go, or you’ll be late…” and she looked at her visitors. “She sells peanut nougat and this is the best time…”