Havana Fever Read online

  His great-granddaughter emerged from the oppressive kitchen with a cup for the Count and a plastic beaker for the old man. The would-be coffee smelt of burnt split peas, and the Count waited for it to cool sufficiently to gulp down the unpleasant brew in one, and observed how Rogelito, helped by his great granddaughter, lifted his container with both hands and took small sips. Conde lit a cigarette, shifted his gaze from that depressing spectacle to those erect nipples marooned on a woman who was certainly tired of caring for an old man in the faint hope she’d inherit those four oozing walls and would, thus, be ready to grant herself a couple of hours of pleasuring without too much agonizing. Nervous, as he usually was in such circumstances, the Count focussed back on the image of the premature chick, with equine teeth and elephantine ears, and cut straight to the point. “Rogelito, someone told me you knew Violeta del Río . . .”

  “One day we were having a few drinks in the Vista Alegre café before heading off to Sans Souci, where we were on at eleven. It was . . . hell, two thousand years ago, just imagine, you could order a coffee with milk on any street corner in this country. The point is that Barbarito Diez, the singer in the orchestra at that time, and I agreed a wager: as he didn’t drink alcohol and ate well, and didn’t go whoring but went to bed when he finished work, and I was quite the opposite, we laid a bet on who’d live the longest, a black guy who looked after himself as he did, or a mad black like me, and our witness was Isaac Oviedo. Isaac was my age, Barbarito a bit more of a kid, five or six years younger, but I gave him the advantage and, you know, I’ve buried poor Barbarito and poor Isaac, and both died at a ripe old age, and now there’s not a brick of the Vista Alegre left standing, let alone any memories . . . but I’m still here, heavens know why or what for . . . More than sixty years playing in whatever orchestra came along, drinking in every bar in Havana, having a ball till daybreak seven days a week, you imagine all the people that I knew. From the twenties onwards Havana was the city of music, of pleasure on tap, with bars on every street corner, and that gave lots of people a living, not just maestros like me, for yours truly spent seven years in the Conservatoire and played in the Havana Philharmonic, but anyone who wanted to earn money from music and with the spunk to keep going . . . After that, the thirties and forties were the heyday of dance halls, social clubs and the first big cabarets with casinos attached, Tropicana, the Sans Souci, the Montmartre, the National, the Parisién, and the little cabarets on the beach, where my mate Chori ruled the roost. But in the fifties it all increased ten-fold: more hotels were opened, all had cabarets, and night clubs became the fashion, there were God knows how many in El Vedado, Miramar, Marianao, and they couldn’t handle big orchestras, they only had room for a piano or a guitar, and a voice. That was the heyday of the people with feeling and heart-rending boleristas, as I called them. They were very special women, they sang because they wanted to and left their hearts on stage, lived the lyrics to their songs, and what they did was magic. Violeta del Río was one of them . . .

  “I remember seeing Violeta three or four times, I think, I didn’t have time to go and see other musicians. Once in the Las Vegas cabaret and another in The Vixen and the Crow, where they had a tiny little dance floor. That day she wasn’t performing, I mean, wasn’t on the programme there, but sang anyway because she really felt like singing and Frank Emilio was at the piano because he really felt like playing and as they were both so keen, what they came out with was something you’d never forget even if you lived to be a thousand. Did I say Violeta was a fantastic female? Well, she was eighteen or nineteen and at that age even Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s a looker. She was olive-skinned, a dark tan, but not mulatta, with jet-black hair, and a big, beautiful mouth, with good teeth, that gave her lots of character even if they were a bit chipped here and there. But her eyes were her best asset: they could chill you to the bone if she pointed them at you, checked you inside and out, like an x-ray machine. She used to sing for the sake of singing all the time, so they said: she enjoyed singing boleros, always very quietly, always with a hint of scorn, half aggressively, as if letting you in on things from her own life. She had quite a husky voice, like an older woman who’d had to put up with a lot in life, and never raised her voice much, almost spoke rather than sang, but when she let rip with a bolero, people went quiet, forgot their drinks, as if she’d hypnotized the lot of them: men and women, pimps and whores, drunks and junkies. She turned out boleros that were dramas and not ordinary songs, as I said, as if they came from her own life and she was telling the whole world, there and then.

  That night I was blown away. I even forgot Vivi Verdura, a big, fat whore, over six feet tall, who’d got her claws into me and was swigging my drinks. And the hour, hour and a bit, two hours, or whatever time Violeta was singing, was like being off the planet, or very close, so close you were right inside that woman, and you never wanted to leave . . . Fucking hell! That day a photographer who was always round the clubs and cabarets, because he earned his crust from taking photos of artists for newspapers and magazines, told me: ‘Rogelito, Violeta’s miracle isn’t that she sings the best but that she can seduce anyone who walks in.’ It was so true. So much so, that picking up gossip here and there one day, I discovered that a very rich fellow, one of the really rich who never went to clubs, had fallen in love with her, wanted to marry her, the whole lot, although he was thirty years older. It seems this big shot was the one paying for the record to launch her big time, get her on television and on the road to an LP with ten or twelve songs . . .

  “But Violeta didn’t need any such helping hand, because she was really good, I tell you, and that was why she began to make a name for herself with that kind of performance and, as always happens in this piss-pot of a country, people couldn’t keep the lid on their envy. Other singers began to stick their knives in and some said if it weren’t for the big shot she’d never get to sing, even in her own backyard. Katy Barqué was the most vicious. Katy was in her prime, but was always fucking venomous, and didn’t want any competition. She knew that Violeta could beat her in that bolero style, as the hard, contemptuous woman, because it came more naturally to her, and because as a female she was much better equipped than Katy. That fracas led to a big row, I discovered, as was to be expected: one day Katy created a scene and called her every name under the sun, but Violeta didn’t respond, just laughed a bit and said that if envy turned your hair yellow, Katy wouldn’t need to dye hers every week . . .

  “Everybody was talking about the cat fight between Katy and Violeta and the mysterious rich guy intent on marrying the girl when that same cabaret photographer, the one they called Salutaris, because he looked like the guy in the advert for Salutaris soft drinks, told me one night: ‘Hey, Rogelito, Violeta’s not going to sing any more.’ He didn’t really know why, and he was the one who knew the tricks everyone was up to, but the rumour was she was going to marry the rich guy, and that the rich guy, after paying for the record and all, now wanted her to give up the club and cabaret scene, not appear on television and become a proper lady. I believed what Salutaris said, because it had happened a thousand times before and Violeta’s situation was nothing new: you bet, she was a girl from a poor background, even though she seemed gentle and good-mannered, and the fact was she lived by singing and if she could suddenly live like a princess, the songs, melodies, even the Parisién and the long, evil nights that do you in could go to fucking hell. Or do some people in, at least . . . Frankly, it surprised me, because I reckoned Violeta lived to sing rather than to earn a few pesos. She had so much passion, she wanted to sing so much, at any hour of the night, whether paid or not, unlike Katy Barqué and all the others, and that’s why I was surprised she’d accepted the condition that she had to give up singing, although women sometimes fall in love – men too, for fuck’s sake – and do what they have to do and especially what they shouldn’t do. All the same, it smelt odd, fishy, as Vicentico Valdés would say . . . The fact is Violeta disappeared from the scene, like so many p
eople in that period, Salutaris included, who went north and I never found out what happened to him . . . That was the last I heard of her, it must have been early 1960, because I went to work in Colombia that year, stayed almost three years, and, you know, I’d not heard her name mentioned until today . . .’

  “Well, of course, apart from the photographer, as I remember it now, let’s see . . . well, I told you Katy Barqué knew her. And she was a friend of Lotus Flower, that blonde who danced almost nude in the Shanghai and then set up her own whore-house. I know they were friends because that day in The Vixen and the Crow they sat at the same table and talked to each other for ages. Another guy who must have known her, because he knew everybody, is Silvano Quintero, the El Mundo journalist who wrote about the showbiz scene. But I never discovered who the guy with the big money was. It didn’t make any difference to me . . . Although you bet he was from a well-heeled family and, if that was the case, flew the nest, probably with Violeta, for sure. If the man really was, say, fifty when that . . . if he was alive he’d be my age and not many of my generation are left, I don’t think any . . . Hell, I once read, and have never forgotten it, that man’s greatest misfortune is to survive all his friends. I don’t know if the guy who wrote did so from personal experience, but I tell you he was right . . . Every morning, when I open my eyes at five o’clock and see I’m still here, I ask myself the same question: ‘Rogelito, how long are you going to keep fucking around?’ I’ve reckoned for quite a time that death’s the only thing I’ve still to do in this life.”

  As soon as he got home that afternoon, Conde checked through the telephone directory and discovered, to his amazement, that Silvano Quintero the journalist still existed and lived in Havana, and after ringing him they agreed to meet in his flat on calle Rayo the following day. What time? “Any,” Quintero replied, “I never go out.” On the other hand, it was more complicated to set up a rendezvous with Katy Barqué, until he lied barefacedly and told her about a film a producer friend of his was planning and which would definitely use some of her songs and which, as she must know, would pay very well . . .

  As if driven by a desire he couldn’t put down, Conde opened the old portable record player he’d brought from Carlos’s place the night before and listened to Be gone from me three or four times. He felt Violeta del Río’s raunchy voice penetrating him, tearing his skin, scarred by the blunt needle running across the acetate, and understood the reasons why the other boleristas from Havana’s nightlife in the fifties, especially Katy Barqué who’d never managed to sing that way, were so envious.

  Intensely, even alarmingly entranced, more convinced than ever that her voice stirred him that way because it touched a sensitive fibre in his memory, Conde decided to turn the disc over and explore the unknown territory on the dark side of the moon. That side of the 45 promised strong emotions with its title You’ll remember me, the Frank Domínguez song which, from what he knew already, would fit Violeta del Río’s aggressive, despotic style like a lamé dress.

  While the record settled after a few initial turns and spluttered plaintively on track to the recorded grooves, the Count shut his eyes and held his breath, allowing his ears to rule over the rest of his senses. As in Be gone from me, the piano introduced the melody and prepared the ground for the voice, as hot and husky as ever, its self-sufficient tone confirming her status as a conqueror refusing to grant the grace of forgiveness:You’ll remember me

  when the sun dies at twilight.

  You’ll ring me

  in the secret hours

  of your sensibility.

  You’ll repent

  you were so cruel to my love,

  you’ll be sorry,

  but it’ll be too late

  to turn back.

  Heavenly memories of yesterday,

  will pursue you,

  your unhappy conscience

  will torment you . . .

  You’ll remember me

  wherever you hear my song,

  because I was the one

  who taught you all . . . all . . .

  you know about love.

  Conde lifted the arm and then lowered the lid. Something morbid was happening for that voice to stir him to the point of igniting what was an unmistakeably hormonal fire. Can I be falling in love with a voice? he wondered, with the ghost of a woman?, he continued, afraid it might be his first step on the spiral to madness. Refusing the masturbatory solution he frequently had recourse to despite his now unseemly age, Conde opted to stand under the water spurting from his shower and put his trust in its ability to release him from adolescent obsessions and rushes of blood.

  His refreshed brain could now review what he’d learnt so far, hoping the encounters planned for the following day with the longlasting Katy Barqué and Silvano Quintero the journalist could clear up the doubt most tormenting him: what did become of Violeta del Río when she abandoned the stage? He’d above all try to find out if the singer’s rich lover had been Mr Alcides Montes de Oca, the last owner and supplier of a stunning library that had put him in such a sweat two days ago. The existence of that press cutting in the entrails of a cookbook would then make sense and begin to explain the possible relationship between those individuals from such distant planets. However, a crucial piece refused to fit the links the Count was making, because Alcides Montes de Oca apparently only took his children with him from Cuba, and Amalia Ferrero was adamant she’d never even heard of the bolerista’s name. Conde realized he’d perhaps made a mistake: perhaps Amalia never knew Violeta del Río, but a woman with another name who’d already retired from a life of music, and he reproached himself for not bringing the singer’s photo along. But the possibility that the faceless lover wasn’t Montes de Oca, but some other man, still remained. Was it possible that after leaving the cabaret Violeta had married, given birth to three children, and lived more than forty years in the deceitful shadow of domestic bliss, between her kitchen and washing machine in a little house in Luyanó or Hialeah? Might she now be a fat, flabby lady with wrinkled buttocks, poisonously embittered because she’d abandoned what she most liked in life? That devastating image killed the Count’s latest feverish ramblings stone dead, although a truth hot from his wild imagination told him he was hallucinating: Violeta had always been the exciting woman in the photo, the unique singer who’d recorded the single, and had been forever and ever. Why did he think so? He didn’t know, but was sure that was the case.

  After shaving, he sprinkled on his best cologne. Right then he was confident the night would turn out as promising as he needed it to be. After checking the irrepressible Rubbish wasn’t in the vicinity, he emptied some leftovers on his tray. He then stepped out into the street, and putting into practice his new status as a moneyed man, hailed a taxi and offered the driver thirty pesos to deviate from his route and take him to Santos Suárez.

  Opposite Tamara’s house, Conde said a quick prayer to Lady Luck, since of all the possible places known to him, it was the place where he could find the most telling relief for the restless sexual urges he’d been fobbing off for days. Cigarette between lips, sheltering behind a bunch of glowing sunflowers he’d bought on the way, he crossed the garden and greeted, as usual, the concrete sculptures that adorned the mansion, forms that were half human and half animal, between Picasso and Lam.

  Tamara opened the door. Her eyes, limpid as ever, like two moist almonds, surveyed the newcomer and lingered on the bunch of flowers. Her sense of smell reacted first.

  “You smell of whores. Not of flowers,” she observed, smiling.

  “We all smell of whatever we can . . .”

  “And this miracle? Five days, no, a week ago . . .”

  “I’ve been working like crazy to get rich.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve made it. At least for a week. And a promising future as a businessman looms ahead. One must change with the times, Tamara. You know, it’s not a sin to be a businessman . . . Quite the contrary in fact. Do you remember that
Guillén poem that began ‘I’m sorry for the bourgeois’?. . .”

  “Of course . . . But what is one supposed to do when one is rich?”

  “First one doesn’t travel by bus. Secondly, one gives flowers to people,” he handed the bouquet to Tamara, “and to round the day off one imagines one is Gatsby and puts on a fancy meal for one’s friends, though before doing that one looks out one’s girlfriend and asks her to accompany one.”

  “Oh yes? And who is Gatsby’s impossible love?”

  She took the flowers. He tried to smile and threw his cigarette butt into the street. He took aim carefully. If his next shot missed it could be fatal.

  “The usual culprit, you know? The girl he met in the Pre-Uni in La Víbora in 1972 and . . .”

  She smiled with a brief, unmistakable puff of sweetness, and the Count realized he’d won the match.

  “Mario Conde, you’ve one hell of a nerve. Thanks for the flowers . . . Come in, I was about to put the coffee on. But what’s that perfume you’re wearing?. . .”

  Conde followed her into the kitchen, relishing the rhythm of that first class piece of flesh he watched shimmy under her dressing gown, already imagining what he might soon elicit from that body he’d explored so often over so many years. Tamara’s journey down the dangerous ravine of the forties had been pleasant and harmonious, although she’d helped herself with push ups and abdominal exercises, step-classes and creams destined to give her muscles more tone, her skin more sheen, and the Count appreciated such female cares of which he periodically was the direct beneficiary.