“No, he didn’t mention that… You know, he left yesterday without saying goodbye, but I wasn’t too worried, because he was like that: half neurotic, and sometimes very introverted. I heard him go out into the passage, and that’s why I know it was around seven… Besides, for your information: Alexis and I were just friends. He had problems at home, his parents were threatening to kick him out every day, so he asked me to let him live here. But that was all there was to it, right? Every sheep has her mate and I’m too old to wolf it.. .”
The Count lit up another cigarette and again wondered: what the fuck have I got into? This world was too remote and exotic for him and he felt totally bewildered, with a thousand questions the answers to which he had no access to. For example: did that old queer like queers or men? And is a man who goes with queers also queer? Can two queers be friends, even live together without having it off with each other? But he said: “Of course, I understand… And how did you and Alexis get to know each other? When did it happen?”
The Marquess smiled again and patted his dressinggown lapels.
“You really don’t know?… You know, eighteen years ago, the year of Our Lord 1971, I was parameterized, and, naturally, didn’t possess the parameters they were after. Can you imagine – parameterizing an artist as if he were a pedigree dog? It would be almost comic if it weren’t tragic. And, on the other hand, it’s such an ugly word… To parameterize. Well, that whole business of parameterizing artists began and they expelled me from the theatre group and association of theatrical artistes, and after finding out I couldn’t work in a factory, as I should have done if I wanted to purify myself by contact with the working class, though nobody ever asked me if I wanted to be pure or the working class whether it was ready to accept such a detox challenge, they put me to work in a tiny library in Marianao, cataloguing books. I’ll confess something to you for which I hope you won’t put me inside, lieutenant sir: it was a mistake. You can’t put an artist too near fine books he doesn’t own, because he’ll steal them… Though he doesn’t have the soul of a thief, he’ll steal them… Just imagine: that library had an edition of Paradise Lost illustrated by Dore. You know the one I mean? Well, I can show you, if you like…”
“That won’t be necessary,” interjected the Count.
“Well, I was working there and Alexis went to study in the library, as it was near the school where he was enrolled. And the fact is he knew who I was and obviously admired me. The poor kid, he didn’t dare speak to me, because he’d heard so many things about me… but you’ll be familiar with all that, I guess? Until one day he dared, and confessed he’d read two of my works and that he’d been present at a rehearsal of Electra Garrigo, and it had been the deepest emotional experience of his life… The poor child adored me, and no artist can resist the adoration of a young apprentice. So, we became friends.”
“Just one last question for now,” said the Count, looking at his watch. That last story seemed the most extraordinary of all he’d heard and read, and he tried to imagine what a man so acclaimed and loved by the critics could have felt in the anonymous silence of a municipal library, where his expectations were reduced to the theft of the odd desirable book. No, it wasn’t so easy. “Did Alexis have problems with anyone?”
Alberto Marques didn’t smile or blink this time. He merely shifted the very long fingers which he’d draped over the end of the chair arm.
“I’m not sure if he had what people call problems. He was a sensitive soul, to put it one way. He craved peace and affection and at home they treated him like a leper, were ashamed of him, and that turned him into someone obsessed, who saw ghosts on every street corner. Besides, he knew he’d never become an artist, which had been his lifelong dream, but he courageously recognized his lack of talent, something not everyone’s capable of doing, right?”
The Count thought: right. And wondered: could that be a dart aimed at me? No, no way, he doesn’t know me and I am really talented. A real fucking talent.
“The people at the Centre for Cultural Heritage loved him, especially the artists, because he always defended them against the filthy sniffing bureaucrats leeching on talent. And I think he really enjoyed a fairly stable relationship with a painter, one Salvador K., whom I don’t know personally. Will that do for now? Do you want to go to the bathroom again?” And now he did manage a smile.
The Count stood up: he’d met an awesome verbal adversary, he thought, and stretched out a hand to receive the emaciated, poorly articulated bones of the famous Alberto Marques. It was a frog’s hand.
“I don’t want to go to the bathroom, but I’m not done. Besides, you owe me the end of the transvestite story.”
“True, my prince,” said the Marquess, unable to restrain himself, and added: “Forgive me, but I’ve got a real thing about titles of nobility, you know? Well whenever you fancy, Sir Policeman Count, but wait a minute: to force you to come back I’m going to lend you the book Muscles wrote on transvestites. It’s dedicated to me, you know?. .. You’ll see what madness human beings are capable of.” And he smiled, rising up to a string of uncontrollable grunts and blinks.
The Count looked at the book’s front cover: a butterfly was emerging from a chrysalis with a grotesquely divided human face: a woman’s eyes and a man’s mouth, female hair and male chin. It was entitled The Face and the Mask; and was quite uncryptically dedicated to “The last active member of the Cuban nobility”. He felt an urge to return home and start reading this book, which might perhaps supply a few keys to what had happened or, at least, teach him something about the dark world of homosexuality. In his mystic dissertation the Marquess had mentioned three possible attitudes among the changelings: metamorphosis as a way to overcome the model, camouflage as a form of disappearance, and disguise as a means of intimidation. Which could have pushed Alexis Arayan into dressing up like Electra Garrigo the very night of the day of the Transfiguration? He was coming round to liking that story, but if he wanted to understand anything he had to know a little more. At least one thing was definite: Alberto Marques couldn’t be the physical murderer of Alexis Arayan. It would have taken those arms two hours to strangle the youth, while he held his nose between two fingers. But he was also sure Alberto Marques was deeply implicated in that death dressed in red.
When he saw Manuel Palacios leaning on the car’s bumper, in the shade of the first flamboyant trees in Santa Catalina, the Count realized how much he was sweating. He’d barely walked four blocks and the sweat was already drenching his shirt, but, bewildered by the rush of information, his brain hadn’t yet processed the feeling of heat he now found in that moisture. It was almost 4 p.m. and the temperature had leapt several degrees.
“What happened?” asked the sergeant, as the Count mopped himself with his handkerchief.
“A very peculiar fellow who’s fucked up my whole day. He’s queerer than a Sunday afternoon,” he said smiling, because the metaphor wasn’t his: it bore the copyright of his old acquaintance Baby Face Miki. “And you know I can’t stand queers… Well, this guy’s different. .. The bastard got me thinking… And what did you find out?”
As the car drove up Santa Catalina en route to Headquarters, Manuel Palacios recounted the first surprising result from the autopsy: “According to your friend Flower of the Dead, they didn’t take anything from the guy’s arse, Conde: on the contrary, they inserted… Two one-peso coins. What do you reckon? Have you ever heard anything like it?”
The Count shook his head. But the sergeant didn’t give him time to process his shock at the unexpected revelation: “The man who killed him is white, blood group AB, and between forty and sixty. Possibly righthanded. In other words, we’ve already a million and a half suspects…”
The Count declined to laugh at the joke and Sergeant Manuel Palacios finished his story: the murder had been by strangling, and the murderer had pulled the sash tight while facing the transvestite, and yet there was only the smallest speck of someone else’s skin on Alexis’s nails. The man’s footprints indicated he weighed some one hundred and eighty to two hundred pounds, that his shoe size was number nine, that he walked normally and probably wore blue jeans, for they’d found a multi-coloured thread that had snagged on a shrub. The possible fellatio was ruled out, for there was no trace of semen in the dead man’s mouth. There was not a single fingerprint and the silk sash provided no useful information. Nothing of special interest was found at the location of the crime: the usual rubbish you come across in such places: a bottle, a used condom, a rusty key, cigar butts with and without their labels – Rey del Mundo, Montecristo, Coronas – and a plastic comb missing six teeth, not to mention a wisdom tooth…