Free Havana Black by Leonardo Padura Page B

replayed that innocent snapshot of his awakening to life, and the policeman on active service thought he could see some remote causes of later disappointments and frustrations: reality had turned out not to be a question of capricious, wilful ascents and descents, unconsciously alternated, with the sea or an ice-cream as a goal, but a struggle to go up and not down, to keep on up, to go up and stay up, for ever and ever, pursuing a philosophy of finding a room at the top from which they had been excluded and definitively locked out – Andrés was right again – and sentenced – almost to a man – to the eternal labour of Sisyphus: to go up only to go down, to go down only to go back up, knowing you’d never stay at the top, getting older and more exhausted, as when he climbed up that night, after walking down, looking for the blonde now waving at him from the corner of Coppelia and who enquired of the Count as he walked up to her: “What’s up, Lieutenant? Anyone would think you’re about to burst into tears.”
    â€œI am, but I won’t . . . The fact is I’ve just found out that some nice kids I knew have just died. But nothing to worry about . . . Anyway, where shall we go and talk?”
    The woman stroked her hair and looked to the heavens for an answer. “The Coppelia is impossible, though I do fancy an ice-cream. Shall we go down to the Malecón?”

    â€œWell, back we go down again,” said the Count, as he set off in search of the sea.
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    â€œI think I made a bad choice, don’t you? They only fished the corpse of my dead husband out of this very same sea two days ago and we still haven’t been able to bury him. They say tomorrow . . . It’s complete madness . . . Do you know something? The worst aspect of Miguel’s death was that they threw him into the sea: he had some complex or other and didn’t like bathing on the beach. But I like the sea, any sea . . .”
    The Count also looked towards the coast, on the other side of the wall, and saw the waves gently lapping against the rocks.
    â€œThe hurricane’s heading this way,” he said, looking at the woman.
    â€œYou think it will get this far?”
    â€œSure it will.”
    â€œWell I’m off as soon as he’s buried. I mean, if you’ll let me.”
    â€œI have no objections,” acknowledged the Count almost without thinking what he was saying.
    In fact he’d have preferred for Miriam to stay: something about her strength – and thighs, and face, and hair and those eyes protected by eyelashes like twisted bars, which made him wonder, poetical as the Count was, whether she would ever go deaf, and that was why God gave her those eyes – attracted him as if it were fated: the blonde, presumably fake, reeked of bed, like roses smell of roses. It was something that seemed natural and endemic and it made him imagine he might breathe that scent in fact in a bed, with its four legs weakening, when she commented: “After all, there’s
nothing for me here,” and she looked at her feet, prey to a persistent pendulum.
    Rising from the floor where he’d been lying on the now-shattered dream bed, the policeman searched for an exit: “What about your family?”
    Miriam’s sigh was long, possibly theatrical.
    â€œMy brother Fermin’s the only member of my family I care about. The rest got upset when I started with Miguel, and later, when I went to Miami, they practically excommunicated me . . . The assholes,” she said, almost unable to contain her rage. “But now I’ve come with dollars, they don’t know which altar to put me on . . . All for a few jeans, designer T-shirts and a couple of Chinese fans.”
    â€œAnd why do you care about your brother?”
    â€œIt was through him I met Miguel . . . they worked together. And always got on well. He was the only one who didn’t condemn me . .