“Mum, there’s no point trying to argue with this lunatic. Go and spruce yourself up and bring me a shirt,” said Carlos. “I could eat a horse. Anyway, we only live once, so let’s…”
“Too true, and, man, am I in the money!” Conde purred, standing up to help Josefina to her feet, who went into the house chuntering to herself.
“Skinny, how old’s your mum?”
“I don’t know… Gone seventy, not eighty yet.”
“She’s really getting old on us,” lamented the Count, returning to his chair.
“Change the subject,” insisted Carlos. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing to the envelope the Count was still gripping.
“Oh, it’s a present for your mother. A book of recipes. They say it’s the best ever published in Cuba. She can’t open it until we’re sat at a table groaning with food, otherwise you’d die of hunger just reading the first recipe… That’s why we’re off to Contreras’s paladar.”
“Contreras?” Carlos replied thoughtfully. “The fat guy who used to be a policeman?”
“The one and only… They gave him six years, he served two, and when he came out he became an entrepreneur. That guy was so streetwise, he must be loaded by now.”
“Conde, have you noticed how many people who used to be in the police or armed forces now do business on the side?”
“A whole heap of them. C’est la vie. Almost all of them have sorted out their little escape routes… Though today I bumped into a retired army major about to drop dead from hunger… You know, the one who sold me the books,” and he added enthusiastically: “Skinny, you’ve got no idea. I’ve found a real gold mine. They’ve got books you can’t put a price to… Look at this one: it’s a little treasure, illustrated by Massaguer to boot. We’re off to eat in a minute, so just listen to this.”
Conde risked opening it at the first page and, trying to find the best angle to benefit from the light in the yard and the best distance for his rampant farsightedness, he read out aloud: “My Pleasure? An indispensable… culinary guide. Under the auspices of the Godmothers of the San Martín and Costales Wards in the General Calixto García University Hospital… What do you reckon? It’s a book of delicious recipes, written from the guilty consciences of the Cuban bourgeoisie… It’s full of impossible recipes…”
“I reckon it’s a tad subversive,” Carlos chimed in.
“If not terrorist.”
The Count casually began to leaf through the book and read aloud, the names of some of the recipes, never going into enough detail to set off the gastric juices, but showing his friend the illustrations by Conrado Massaguer. Presently, between pages 561 and 562, he found a page of newsprint that had been folded in half and, with the care inculcated by his experience as a bookseller and policeman, he carefully extracted it to take a look.
“What have you got there?” enquired Carlos.
Because it had been kept out of the light and air, the magazine page, roughly fifteen by ten inches, had preserved its original light greenish colour. Conde found the name of the publication at the foot of the page: Vanidades, May 1960. The facing page advertised new General Electric washing machines on sale in Sears, El Encanto and Flogar. Convinced the paper carried another more substantial message, he opened it out and for the first time looked into the dark eyes of Violeta del Río.
“I’m not sure… ‘Violeta del Río says farewell’… Fuck, Skinny, take a look at this woman.”
They’d printed a full-page photograph of Violeta del Río, sheathed in gold lamé – the Count assumed, although he’d never touched lamé – that it fitted her like a snake’s skin. While suggesting the presence of wild breasts, the material also revealed a pair of firm legs and cut back the evidence of forceful thighs opening out from a slim, tempting waistline. Her 1950s-style black, slightly wavy hair cascaded down to her shoulders, framing a smoothskinned face that highlighted her thick, sensual mouth, and eyes that now stared magnetically and vigorously at him.
“Hell, what a specimen!” agreed Skinny. “Who was she?”
“Let me see…” and he read, jumping from line to line: “ ‘Violeta del Río… the greatest singer of boleros… the Lady of the Night… revealed at the end of a wonderful performance that it was her last… Owner and leading lady at the Cabaret Parisién… At the pinnacle of her career… She had just recorded the promotional single Be gone from me, as a taster for her LP Havana Fever…’ You ever heard of her?”
“No, never,” confessed Skinny. “But you know what those magazines were like. They probably wouldn’t recognize her in her own bathtub but they make out she was the Queen of Sheba.”
“Yeah, probably. But I have heard her name somewhere,” responded the Count, not realizing his gaze was still transfixed by the dark eyes of that sultry, exultant woman in her early twenties, her frozen image from long ago still generating real, live heat. Josefina strutted back sporting the dress dotted with tiny flowers that she kept for her most important outings: her periodic visits to the doctor. The old lady had gathered her hair up, painted her lips a faint but shiny colour and now smiled shyly.
“Well, meet the Lady of Hot Nights in Víbora,” quipped the Count.
“You look great, Mum,” came the compliment from Skinny, who immediately asked: “Hey, you ever heard of Violeta del Río, a bolero singer from the fifties?”
Josefina lifted a small handkerchief to her upper lip.
“No, I can’t say…”
“What did I tell you, Conde? She was a complete unknown…”
“Yes, probably… But I’ve heard of her somewhere or other…” and added: “Let’s go out the front, Tinguaro will be here any minute now.”
“Tinguaro?” asked Carlos.
“Yeah, the guy who used to be in the police. He’s set up as a cab driver and sells Montecristo, Cohiba and Rey del Mundo cigars, just the same or even better than those from the factory, and he hires out a bunch of painters who leave houses, blocks or mausolea gleaming like new pins. And he finds them their paint!”
2nd October
My dear:
My only hope is that when this letter reaches you it finds you well, so far from here and yet so near. So near to my heart and yet so far from my hands that can’t reach you, although every heartbeat feels you, as if you were here, next to my bosom, which you should never have forsaken.
You cannot imagine what these days without sight of you have meant, made worse by my inability to calculate how long our separation will last. Every hour, every minute I think about you, because everything here brings you to mind, everything exists because you existed and gave your breath to everything, to everybody, but particularly to me.
When it’s still hot, and I go into the garden in search of a cool breeze and see the foliage of the trees you planted over the years, I feel that that breath of air, filtered through the sharp rustling leaves of the mamey, the whispering custard apple and faintly tinkling leaves of the old ceiba (your ceiba, do you remember how joyfully you greeted its first flowers every summer?), is a part of you coming to me from distant parts, and I dream that perhaps a particle of that air was once inside you and, summoned by my solitude, flew across the sea to console and nourish me and keep me alive for you.
My love, how are you? How do you feel? How have you spent your first days over there? Have you seen friends and colleagues? I know that place never appealed, that you preferred life here, but if you can think of this absence as a parenthesis in your life, the distance may seem more tolerable, and you will connect better with me. (For I like to think this time I spend here will be just that: a parenthesis in a passionate love that has been painfully truncated, but which will emerge strengthened and go on to a better finale). Don’t you agree?