He had legs of stone. He’d sit on a stool in the entrance to the cockpit, and, holding the rooster in one hand, lean his legs of stone slightly backwards so the back of the stool rested against the doorpost made of caguairán, the hardest of Cuban woods. He then stroked the cock, fingered its neck and breast, combed its tail, cleaned the sawdust from its feet and blew on its beak, and injected his own breath. He was always poking a toothpick in his mouth and I was afraid he would swallow it one day. He had some small scissors in his shirt pocket and when he’d caressed and soothed his rooster he’d say “Come on, you beauty. Up you get, you fine fellow.” He’d take his scissors and start clipping its feathers, I don’t know how he did all that with his two hands, moving the bird as if it were a toy and the cock moving with him, as the scissors trimmed and the feathers fell on his legs of stone and the cock became even more handsome, a perfect beauty, red thighs and red comb and spurs as long as needles, no, spurs of a fighting cock. By that time of day the sun was filtering through the branches of the tamarind tree and in that light Granddad seemed speckled by the sun, himself a huge fighting bird. The rich smell from the neighbouring bakery wafted on the air in the cockpit entrance, mingled with the unmistakable odour of feathers, the vapour from the liniment for the birds’ muscles, the stench of fresh chicken shit and the aroma from the wood chips covering the floor of the enclosed arena. He will kill or be killed, he’d tell me, when he let the cock go to peck in the grass, sitting me on his legs, that felt as hard as stone. The fate of the cock was an everyday issue, and I wanted to tell him to give it to me as a present, that it was such a beautiful cock, that I wanted it for myself and didn’t want it to be killed, ever. “Look at it scratch; look at it strut. This is a blue-blooded bird, it’s got balls, can you see them?” and I thought a cock’s balls never hang down, they’re inside, and they drop them for just a second, when they mount the hen, but so quickly you never see them – until I discovered my Grandfather was a poet and that the cock’s balls business was a metaphor, or a chance, happy association, as Lorca would say – a man who knew nothing about fighting cocks, but all there was to know about bulls and bullfighters, but that’s another story: yes, you could see it had balls. I sometimes dream about Grandfather Rufino and his roosters and it’s a dream of death: all those perfect animals died in some contest, and my grandfather died from a dearth of fights and poetry, when cock-fighting was banned and when he became so old his legs of stone went soft and he could no longer go to clandestine pits and be sure to run faster than the police. Then he aged to his bones: “Never start a fight if you’re not intent on winning,” he always told me, and, when he knew all was lost, he didn’t fight any more. A poet of war. I don’t know why I’m thinking so much of you today. Or perhaps I do: seeing him, his legs of stone and the stool leaning against the caguairán doorpost, I learned, quite unawares, that he and I shared the fate of the fighting cock.
“Go on then.” Lieutenant Mario Conde looked out from the window of his third floor cubicle at the lonely crest of the laurel tree lashed by the wind. The sparrows that nested in its top branches had migrated and the tree’s small leaves seemed about to perish after three days of non-stop buffeting: “Resist,” he shouted to the leaves with a disproportionate, rival energy, as if the endurance of the leaves was also implicated in the struggle for his own life. He’d set up such ridiculous parallels, and always did so when something too intense was torturing him: guilt, shame, or love. Or a memory.
Waving a foot like a nervous ballet dancer about to stumble, Sergeant Manuel Palacios waited for the Count to turn round.
“What’s wrong, Conde?”
“Nothing, don’t worry. Off you go.”
Manolo opened his battered notebook and began to improvise: “The only thing clear is that nothing is clear. The forensic says the girl had a high level of alcohol in her bloodstream, some 225 mill, and that given her physical make-up, she must have been pretty drunk when they killed her, because the abrasions show she didn’t put up much of a defence. For example, her nails were clean, so she didn’t scratch her attacker and she didn’t have bruising on her forearms, as someone protecting herself would. He can’t tell us anything about the marijuana. They scraped the flesh on her fingertips and did an analysis with reagents but nothing showed up. There’s no analysis that can detect it in the sample, unless the sample comes from a smoker who’s really hooked. Now for the juicy news: she had sexual contact with two men and there are no signs of violence in these contacts: no part of her sex indicates an unwanted penetration. The things one learns on the job, right? If entry is friendly, then it’s all squeaky clean, as you say… The fact is there is semen from two men, one A-positive and the other from blood group O; that, as you know is much rarer, but the doctor swears on his mother that between one penetration – his words, Conde, don’t look at me like that – that between one penetration and the next there was a gap of four or five hours, given the state the sperm were in when the autopsy was carried out. That means the first penetration took place before she was drunk, because the alcohol had spent less time in her bloodstream. You with me? And then he says, though he’s no definite evidence, it seems the A-positive guy, the first in, is a man between thirty-five and forty-five, given the state of his sperm, and that the second, the group O guy, is more vigorous, say around the twenty mark, although some old-stagers have a youngsters’ juice and that’s why they can impregnate. All revealed thanks to a bastard sperm. And now for a shocker: you already in a state of shock? Well, Pupy, that is, Pedro Ordoñez Martell, the man on the motorbike, is blood group O. Not fallen off your chair yet?”
Without going to such extremes, Conde squirmed in his chair and leaned his elbows on his desk. His eyes settled level with the sergeant’s, as if demanding his full attention.
“For once and for all, Manolo, are you or are you not squint-eyed?”
“You still fucking harping on about that?”
“So how did you find out about Pupy being an O?”
“Didn’t you know I’m as swift as an arrow? One day they should award me the fastest policeman medal… I just thought I’d track him down as I wasn’t going to see you for an hour, so I went to the Committee, asked after him, and from what they told me he’s a semi-lumpen or a lumpen-and-a-half. He lives on buying and selling motorbikes. It seems his parents are upright enough and they’re always rowing with him, but he couldn’t care a damn. He’s got a reputation as a charmer and fancies himself with the girls. I didn’t try to see him or anything like that, but I had one of those brainwaves of which I have such a good supply and thought about the blood thing and went to see his doctor in case he had that bit of info and, of course, he did: “Oh, it’s O, his doctor told me, and he confirmed Pupy is twenty-five. What do you reckon, Duke?”
“That I’m going to nominate you for the fastest policeman medal. But don’t change my title, for fuck’s sake,” he protested meekly and went back to the window. It was a pristine midday: the light beat down equally on everything within reach and the shadows were severe and fleshless. At that moment a nun in habits ruffled by Lenten winds emerged from the church on the other side of the street. Original sin spares nobody, you know? Two dogs recognized each other, sniffed each other’s rumps in a proper, orderly manner, in a gesture of goodwill exploring a possible friendship. “So I take it two men, one around forty, and the other younger, were with her on the same night, but at different times and… probably neither killed her, right?”