Free Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura Page A

know, one ingredient is missing that you always add to fish: potatoes. You know why?”
    Hypnotized by her magic incantation, gawping incredulously, the four friends shook their heads.
    â€œBecause the potato is hard-hearted and this lot is of more noble mind.”
    â€œJose, where the hell do you get all this stuff?” asked the Count, on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
    â€œDon’t be such a policeman and take the dishes to the kitchen.”
    The Count, Andrés and the Rabbit voted to nominate it the world’s best ajiaco , but Carlos, who’d downed three big spoonfuls while the others were still blowing the steam rising from their bowls, pointed out critically that his mother had often cooked it better.

    They drank coffee, washed up and Josefina decided to go to see the Pedro Infante film they were showing in the “History of the Cinema” because she preferred that story of tip-top Mexican cowboys to the argument the diners launched into with the first round of the night’s third bottle of rum.
    â€œHey, savage,” said Skinny after downing another line of rum, “do you really think the marijuana has to do with Pre-Uni.”
    The Count lit his cigarette and imitated his friend’s alcoholic style.
    â€œI don’t know, Skinny, I really don’t, but it’s my gut feeling. As soon as I stepped back into Pre-Uni I felt it was another world, another place, and I couldn’t see it like it was our Pre-Uni. There’s nothing stranger than going somewhere you thought you knew by heart and realizing it’s not what you’d imagined. I do think we were more innocent and kids now are more crooked or cynical. We liked to wear our hair long and be transported by our music, but we were told so often we had a responsibility before history that we finally believed we did and we knew we had to shoulder it, right or wrong? There weren’t the hippies or drop-outs there are now. This guy,” and he pointed at Rabbit, “spent the whole day harping on about being a historian and read more books than the whole history department put together. And this fellow,” it was now Andrés’ turn, “decided he was going to be a doctor and he is a doctor, and spent every day
playing baseball because he wanted to get in the National League. And didn’t you spend your whole time chasing skirt and then get an average mark of 96?”
    â€œHey, Conde,” Skinny waved his hands, like a coach trying to stop a runner dangerously on course to a suicidal out, “what you say is true, but it’s also true there were no hippies, because they fumigated the lot . . . Every man jack.”
    â€œWe weren’t so different, Conde,” then Andrés intervened, shaking his head when Skinny went to offer him the bottle. “Things were different, that’s true, whether more romantic or less pragmatic, who knows, or maybe they treated us harder, but I think in the end life passes us all by. Them and us.”
    â€œListen to him speak: ‘less pragmatic things’,” Rabbit laughed.
    â€œDon’t piss around, Andrés, what do you mean, passed us fucking by? You’ve done what you wanted to do and if you were never a baseball player, it was down to bad luck,” countered Skinny, who remembered the day when Andrés sprained his ankle and was out of his best championship. It was a real defeat for the whole tribe: Andrés’ injury put an end to all their hopes of having a pal in the dugout belonging to the Industriales, seated between Capiró and Marquetti.
    â€œDon’t think that for one minute. What the hell happened to you? You don’t fool me, Carlos: you’re fucked
and they fucked you up. I can walk and I’m fucked as well: I never was a baseball player, I’m a bog-standard doctor in a bog-standard hospital, I married a woman who’s also bog-standard who works in a shitty office where they fill