Free Private House by Anthony Hyde Page B

mostly bicycles, actually—with a few ramshackle garages. By the entrance here, a man with a cigarette dangling from his lip had spread out second-hand books on a table. A few customers unenthusiastically perused his wares. Lorraine knew the word “cruising” from Murray. Now she imagined this place at night, after the crowds had thinned out. People would linger. Laughter would come from the shadows. Cigarettes would glow in the dark and greetings would be called. At night, it would be a market of a different kind. She wondered if Murray had found Almado here, and if he had purchased him. She closed her eyes: in pain. Or was she being superior? moralistic? Murray had always been so eager as he set out on his trips. Had he loved Almado? She recalled what she’d said to the French woman that morning: “Almado represents all that I love but I’m not sure I love him .” Had this been Murray’s way of saying that he loved only himself? He’d feared that, certainly. She’d remembered this, in the church, as she’d prayed. Murray so longed for something “out there,” beyond himself. Had he found that in Almado—or had he finally given up looking? These questions were unresolvable, but again she decided that any investigations here, of a nocturnal nature, were more than her conscience could ask. She crossed the road to the taxi rank. Coco-taxis, she’d discovered, were scooters enclosed in a yellow fibreglass shell. Lorraine had not previously braved one. Now she felt bold enough. “Parque Central,” she said, as the young man revved his engine. “The Inglaterra.” According to her guidebook, it had once been Havana’s finest hotel, whose distinguished guests dined in a grand room with great arches and a glorious ceramic ceiling. So she would be a lady of a certain age, from a different time, and enjoy a wonderful—no, a splendid —lunch.
    3
    After the sun and dust of O’Reilly Street, Mathilde blinked in the darkness of the café; but then she got her bearings and ascended, as instructed, the shaky circular staircase that carried her to the upper floor.
    Emerging, she discovered a dark room jammed with crude furniture, upright chairs with leather backs and heavy, clumsy tables. It all looked very uncomfortable; and no one was sitting there—she’d come early, deliberately. The only customers, Australians to judge by their voices, were sitting on a balcony that overlooked the street. Stepping through an opening that must once have been a window, she went to the opposite end, and stood, shading her eyes against the sun. Across the way, a balcony flew the unofficial national flag, drying laundry, and in the street a group of street musicians had gathered, bangingtrash can cymbals, strumming a washboard and guitars, clicking castanets, while the hat was passed among the tourists. The lady of the Australian couple leaned over the edge of the balcony and snapped pictures with her digital camera; meanwhile, Coto, the house cartoonist, was sketching her husband—paper, Magic Marker, a clipboard. Examples of his work were hung along the top of the walls in the other room: Mathilde recognized Pelé, quite possibly Chirac. Watching all this, she tried to work out the complexities of the transactions involved: the street musicians claiming their bounty from the tourists while the Australian lady stole their images, even as Coto appropriated hers.
    But then she glanced down the street: her eye had picked out the figure of a black man, striding along. He was of only average height, and he was no longer young, but his figure at once communicated physical force: a definition that set him out from the crowd. And she thought immediately, That is him. That was her first impression; he stood apart; and not because of any particular circumstance, or choice for that matter, but purely as a result of who he was . . . though she would later refine