“Forget it, don’t teach your granddaddy to suck eggs. I was doing this before you knew how to clean the snot… You know, Mario, I reckon you’re slowing down. What’s up?”
The Count stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray before replying: “I don’t know, Boss, there’s something I don’t get in all this, you know, the marijuana factor – not knowing where it came from makes me like I can’t concentrate.”
The major’s gesture was theatrical and perfect: he raised his hands to his head and looked towards the ceiling, as if looking for heaven’s mercy.
“Now that is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’ll let you retire right now. So it’s all down to a problem of concentration, is it?”
“But I feel fine, Boss.”
“With that shitty look on your face?… Mario, Mario, remember what I told you: keep it above board, whatever your impulses. Don’t put one foot out of line, or I’ll amputate it myself.”
“But, Boss, what’s it all about? What’s the real story?”
“I told you I don’t know, but I can smell something’s brewing. There’s an investigation around that comes from the very top. I don’t know what’s up or what they’re looking for, but it’s a big deal and heads will roll… And don’t ask me any more questions… Hey, did you know I got a little parcel and letter from my daughter yesterday? Apparently it’s all going well with her Austrian ecologist. They’re living in Vienna, I did tell you that, didn’t I?”
“I’d love to live in Vienna. I’d try my arm at leading the girls’ choir. Twenty-year-old… Does Vienna have police?”
“In the letter she told me she’d been to Geneva with her husband, to one of those meetings about whales, and you know where she went: to Zino Davidoff’s tobacconist shop. She says it’s a beautiful place and bought me a box of five cigars… You can’t imagine how much I miss her, Mario. I don’t know why my little girl had to leave here.”
“Because she fell in love, Boss, what more do you want? Look, I’m also in love and if I’m told we’re going to New Orleans, I’ll go with her.”
“New Orleans? You’re in love? What’s this all about?”
“No, it’s just to listen to blues, soul, jazz and the like.”
“Off you go, Mario, I can’t stand any more. You’ve got forty-eight hours to settle this one. If not, don’t even bother coming for your pay at the end of the month.”
The Count got up and looked at his boss. He dared again: “That’s OK, love feeds…” he declared on his way to the door.
“You’ll be starving soon enough… Hey, did you hear about Jorrín? He had a bad turn on Wednesday night. It was very peculiar: a pre-heart attack, they say. I went to see him yesterday and he asked after you. He’s in the Clinic on Twenty-sixth. You know, Mario, I think that’s it for Jorrín the policeman.”
The Count thought about Captain Jorrín, the old seadog at headquarters. And remembered how he’d never met up with him outside the walls of that building in ten years. He was always promising to pay him a call, to sit down with him and have a coffee, a few shots of rum, and talk about what people usually talk about – and in the end he never kept his promise. Were they friends? He felt unbelievably guilty when he told his chief: “How shitty, right?” and walked out leaving his chief wrapped in a cloud of blue, fragrant Davidoff 5000 smoke, a 14.2 centimetre Gran Corona, from the 1988 Vueltabajo crop, sold in Geneva by the tsar himself: Zino Davidoff.
There are people who are luckier and can trust to the fate God or the devil has planned for them. I’m not one, I’m a disaster, and worse still, I sometimes take a gamble, and you know, fuck everything up. What is going to happen now? Yes, it’s true. I thought about giving you a ring and telling you, but shied off. I was scared: scared you might connect me with what happened, scared my wife might find out, scared they’d find out at Pre-Uni and lose their respect for me… I’m not ashamed to tell you: I’m afraid. But I wasn’t involved in what happened. How could I ever do anything like that? I was mad about her and even thought of talking to my wife and telling her, but Lissette didn’t want me to, she said it was too soon, she didn’t want to go public, she was too young. A disaster. No, just two months ago. When we were at the school camp. You know it’s different there, more relaxed than in school and it almost started like a game, she was still Pupy’s girlfriend, the biker, and I thought it was no go, that it was just a dirty old man’s wishful thinking – but when we returned to Havana, one day when we finished a meeting around seven, I asked her if she’d invite me for a coffee and that’s how it began. But I’m sure nobody knew. Do you think I could ever harm her? I think Lissette was one of the best things to happen to me, she gave me a reason to live, to do crazy things, to abandon everything, even to forget my fate, because she might be my fate… Out of jealousy? What jealousy? She’d split up with Pupy, she swore it was all over, and when you’re forty-six and a woman twenty years younger says that you just have to believe her or go home and sweep the backyard and devote yourself to chicken-breeding… I was going to see her earlier that day, but this job is hell, if it’s not Juan, it’s Pedro, and if it’s not the Party it’s the Town Hall, and I left here around six-thirty. I was at her place just over an hour, no longer, because when I got home the eight-thirty soap was beginning… Well, yes, we did have sexual relations, that’s reasonable enough, isn’t it? A positive? That’s right, how did you find out? So, you know the whole lot, don’t you? Yes, I spent that whole night at home. I had to prepare a report for the following day, that’s why I left Pre-Uni so late that day. Yes, my wife was there and one of the children, the youngest, the other’s sixteen and goes out almost every night, he’s got a girlfriend now. Yes, my wife can confirm that, but please, is it really necessary? Don’t you believe me? I know, it’s your job, but I’m a person, not a lead… What do you want, my world to collapse around me? Who do you want me to swear by? No, she wasn’t going with anyone else, I do know that for a fact, they must have raped her, for she was raped, wasn’t she? Didn’t they rape and then kill her? Why do you force me to talk about all this, for fuck’s sake? It’s like being punished because I believed I could still feel I was alive, alive like her… I’m scared… Yes, he’s a good student, has he done something? Just as well. Yes, the office will give you the address… But what’s going to happen now? My wife? If I’d been lucky…
Hospitals are suffused with an odour of pain and sorrow: ether, anaesthetics, aerosols, alcohol you can’t drink… The one test Conde wanted never to face again was being admitted to hospital. The months when he watched over Skinny’s agonizing sleep, when he was skinnier than ever, on his front in bed, his back shattered, his legs useless and that colour of murky glass in his eyes, had given him memories for ever of the unique smell of suffering. Two operations in two months, all his hopes dashed in two months, his whole life changed in two months: a wheelchair and paralysis creeping like a slowly burning fuse, eating up nerves and muscles until one day it would reach his heart and burn him to death. Once again he recognized that hospital odour as he walked through the foyer – empty at that time in the afternoon – and, without saying a word, he almost rubbed his police credentials in the eyes of the guard who came between them and the lift.
They looked for a signpost on the third-floor corridor. Room 3-48 must be on the left, according to the notice sergeant Manuel Palacios had seen, and they walked on counting off the even-numbered cubicles.
The Count looked in and saw Captain Jorrín’s unshaven face on the raised head of a Fowler bed. By his side, on the indispensable chair, a tired-looking woman in her fifties stopped swaying gently and stared at them questioningly. She got up and walked towards the corridor.