Havana Fever Read online

  But my life really changed in 1955 and I was able to give up the theatre and all that. Louis was in Havana around that time and told me to ask for a week off from the Shanghai, we were going to go to Varadero, because he wanted a rest and to introduce me to some friends who were going to make me a really profitable offer. When we reached Varadero we checked in at a beautiful sea-front hotel, a wooden building straight out of an American movie. During the day we swam on the beach, like a honeymoon couple, and swanned around in a convertible. That night we went for dinner in a big house on the banks of the canal, near the spot where they built the Hotel Kawama, soon after. Alcides Montes de Oca, Louis’s partner, was there, who I’d seen a couple of times before, and a very elegant man with a clown’s face who spoke softly although he never laughed, and turned out to be Meyer Lansky. When it was time to eat, another man, Joe Stasi came along. It was a really boring dinner, because Louis, Alcides, Stasi and Lansky spent the whole time talking about imports and exports, and as Lansky only drank a couple of glasses of Pernod and hated drunks, we hardly saw a drop of wine. Then, when they offered us cognac and coffee on the terrace, opposite the canal, Alcides Montes de Oca finally told me what they wanted me for. They were organizing a scheme to attract millions of American tourists to Cuba and these tourists required four essential items: good hotels, casinos, readily available high quality drugs and young, healthy, elegant, dissolute women. If I accepted, my responsibility would be to work with those women. They were planning special journeys to Havana for extremely wealthy people, celebrities, artists, journalists, and so on, and would treat them all so they felt they’d been to paradise, so they’d spread the good news about holidays in Havana. I had to create the kind of agency with only top-notch girls – none of your average, unsophisticated whores. I’d to choose the best and create a quality service. Sometimes these women wouldn’t only go to bed with their men, they’d also have to accompany them in Havana and needed to know how to behave in a restaurant, cabaret, casino or even at the theatre. The women would be paid a fixed wage, a high wage, whether they had lots or little work, so they weren’t soliciting all over the place. If I accepted, one of Stasi’s men would set up the whole structure: he’d be a kind of accountant-administrator, working with hotels and casinos, and I’d look for the women and be responsible for training them, together with an etiquette expert who’d teach them to behave and dress well. Then I’d deal directly with the girls, be like a manager and get a three per cent cut of whatever the rich and famous lost gambling in casinos, which might be quite a lot . . . Initially, in the three or four months necessary to get the agency up and running, I’d be paid a salary of 500 pesos. 500 pesos! Do you know what 500 pesos meant back then! A small fortune.

  I immediately dropped the dancing in the Shanghai and started on my new role. By the beginning of ’56 the elite agency, as Bruno Arpaia dubbed it, was up and running. He was Stasi’s man who was working alongside me. We recruited sixteen women, almost all from outside the brothel districts. I inspected cabarets and clubs in Havana and went on expeditions into the interior, as we described it, and to big cities like Cienfuegos, Camagüey and Matanzas. We selected girls to fit our business needs and taught them to eat, dress, speak softly, and I taught them how to behave with men and how they should let themselves be treated . . .

  By the end of that year the agency worked so well we had to find more women. On one of our expeditions, I came across a girl who sang there three or four nights a week in a little cabaret in Cienfuegos, and apart from being one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, she had a special voice: I say it was a woman’s voice because that was the only way to describe it. Her only drawbacks were the what she was wearing and her name, Catalina Basterrechea, although people called her Lina or Lina Beautiful Eyes, to get round that.

  As soon as I met her I realized Lina was a Cinderella: singing was her life and she spent the whole time dreaming someone would appear and give her the opportunity to put her glass slippers on, show off her talent and become famous into the bargain. The usual old story! Only as far as she was concerned singing was a pleasure, not just a means to an end. So, though Lina wasn’t a whore and had no such inclinations, she might be ready to do the necessary to attain her goal. I was delighted by the idea of signing her up, because the minute I saw her I knew I’d found a diamond in the mud and that with a little polishing she’d become the star of the agency, but after I’d talked to her for a while, I felt she had something different, something that moved me, and the fact is I was never usually one to be moved by stories of dead parents, lousy aunts and cousins that rape you at the age of ten, like the ones she told me. No . . . But I explained quite clearly what I was about and – I still don’t quite know why – offered her a special deal: if she wanted, she could come with me to Havana and help me in some way with my business, without having to whore, and I’d use my contacts to find her someone to help her find a place where she could sing. And, of course, she packed her cheap little suitcase and left with me, and didn’t say goodbye to the bastard of an aunt who’d made her life impossible . . . I’ve always thought that destiny meant for Lina and I to meet, for her life story to touch what remained of my heart, and for me to like whatever she sang. Lina and I were good friends from the start, and if I’d ever thought of suggesting she worked with my girls if she didn’t make it as a singer, I quickly gave up on that and decided to protect and help her any way I could. Was it a kind of maternal feeling? As if I could see myself in her and wanted to give myself a second chance? You tell me . . . but that’s how it turned out.

  Within a month or month and a half of Lina being in Havana, Louis returned from New Orleans and told me we must go back to Varadero and meet Lansky, Alcides and two American entrepreneurs who were going to build hotels in there. I don’t know why but I persuaded Louis it would be a good idea to take Lina, because I thought she’d sing for his friends and make dinner a little less boring . . . That was how Alcides Montes de Oca and Lina Beautiful Eyes met up: he was almost fifty and she was under twenty, but when the business talk ended and Lina started to sing, Alcides fell madly in love with the girl, her looks and her voice.

  Alcides Montes de Oca was a character with some strange baggage, I should tell you. He came from a high society family and was very wealthy, even more so since he’d inherited the fortune belonging to his wife who’d just died. He liked talking politics and was very proud to be a grandson of a general in the Army of Liberation; he loathed Batista. According to him, Batista was the worst disaster that had ever hit this country, and I’m sure that at the time he supported the rebels, because many had belonged to the Orthodox Party which Alcides had been a member of when Batista struck with his coup d’état and suspended the elections the Orthodoxers were about to win. He was also a very cultured man who read a lot, and Louis told me he had books galore in his house. But at the same time he had a nose for business and although he didn’t appear to own anything, because he didn’t need to, he owned shares in all the big companies in Cuba. Through his business concerns he got on with Lansky like a house on fire, though this friendship was never reported in the newspapers, because everyone knew the Jew had been a drug-trafficker in the States, although here he only operated legal business and behaved, well, as I said, like a gentleman.

  So Alcides and Lina became infatuated; they were crazy about each other, and, to please her, he got her a singing spot in the second show at the Las Vegas and quickly moved her from my place to a flat in Miramar, in a building that had just received its finishing touches. The only problem complicating their romance were Don Alcides’s political aspirations and his social situation. He’d been widowed only recently and couldn’t enter a formal relationship with a poor country-girl, who was thirty years his junior . . . If it had been nowadays! But in those days a scandal like that could have damaged Alcides’s position considerably and so they decided to keep things quiet: he kept her, saw to all her wants, paid for the flat and gave her a car, although Lou
is appeared as the legal owner of everything in order to avoid nasty gossip.

  The person responsible for looking after Lina’s needs and expenses was Alcides’s personal secretary, an awesome woman by the name of Nemesia Moré. She saw to all his commercial and political paperwork, as well as being something like the administrator of his household, but with more power, because since Alcides became a widower, Nemesia had assumed the role of lady of the house. She was in her forties, had retained her good figure, and had a real gift: she was always able to anticipate Alcides’s thoughts and satisfy them before he’d even asked for anything. Consequently Alcides would say, half jokingly, half seriously, that the most important woman in his life was Nemesia Moré: he couldn’t live without her.

  In the meantime, Lina had started singing and the owner of the Las Vegas only imposed one condition before contracting her: a change of name. Just imagine a compère announcing: “And now ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Catalina Basterrrrrechea!” After a moment’s thought Alcides said: “Violeta del Río”, as if he’d already got the name in his head, and so Catalina Basterrechea, Lina Beautiful Eyes died, and Violeta del Río the bolerista was born. She immediately got a big reputation and sang in the best places, even made the Parisién, by which time Havana knew her as the Lady of the Night, and she had countless men chasing after her to hear her sing and, naturally, trying to seduce her, because the country-girl had transformed herself into a spectacular woman, wearing clothes from New York, perfumes from France and with her hair styled by the best hairdressers in Havana . . . Was this the woman your father fell in love with? Poor man, how he must have suffered . . .

  As far as I know, Lina saw life through Alcides’s eyes, and the only thing she refused was classes from a singing teacher he’d insisted on hiring for her; she wanted to sing from her soul, and if someone taught her, she said, they’d damage the desire she’d had naturally from childhood and that had saved her from going crazy. And I think she was right. She needed a microphone, not classes. On stage she was a fantastic act, I’d never seen or heard anything like her – and I’d seen plenty in my lifetime – she turned everything into magic. Even today, after all these years, I shut my eyes and see her holding the microphone, throwing her hair back that fell like a mantle over her beautiful eyes, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue, and I can hear her sing those songs that came straight from her soul . . . Poor girl . . .

  Violeta was a happy woman, the happiest woman in the world while her dream lasted. It sounds like a radio soap, but that’s how it was. And she was still happy when 1959 came and everything suddenly changed: for Lansky and Alcides, for Louis and me, and for the girls who worked for the agency. Because the country changed . . . The rebels won the war and Batista left Cuba, which was what everybody wanted. Although people only spoke about Revolution to begin with, some people were already mentioning the word communism and Lansky was the first to grasp what might happen: he immediately started to pack his bags. Louis also thought it would be better to be on the other side of the sea and he persuaded Alcides to take whatever he could out of Cuba and forget about politics now his moment had come and gone. Initially Alcides refused, but within a few months, deeply upset, he saw Louis and Lansky were right. Even so, when he decided to leave he did so thinking he’d be back in a few months, a few years at most, and only took the money he’d already taken out and what was most important to him: his children and his wife-to-be, Violeta del Río.

  I wasn’t very surprised when Violeta accepted Alcides’s suggestion that she should stop singing and go the States. She was probably persuaded by Alcides’s promise that they’d be able to marry and lead a normal life where nobody knew them. Or maybe he convinced her by saying she’d be able to take up singing later on. Or perhaps she agreed because she thought the most important thing was to safeguard her relationship with a man who idolized her and whom she loved deeply. Whatever the reason, Violeta announced she was retiring from the stage at the end of 1959 and Alcides began to prepare his departure from Cuba, trying to salvage what he could, although he lost an enormous amount of money when they started to take over sugar plantations and nationalize American companies in which he held shares.

  Violeta and I saw lots of each other over those months. Lansky had returned to Cuba for the last time in March or April 1959, shut his business ventures down and returned to the States. Obviously, one of the ventures that died the death was the escort agency, so I was soon unemployed, with lots of time on my hands and money in the bank. Louis, for his part, promised he’d still come to Cuba whenever he could, but it was clear he couldn’t take me to New Orleans because that’s where his wife and children were, a life where I didn’t fit. Anyway I wasn’t too concerned by all that: several girls wanted to carry on working with me and I told myself: this revolution may be a big deal, but if one line of business will never close, it’s whoring. So, while this or that did or didn’t happen, I had lots of time to decide what to do. You know, sometimes you do fucking stupid things, however clever you are . . .

  Poor Violeta was desperate to leave. After she’d announced her retirement she was adrift here and just wanted out, but Alcides kept delaying his departure, waiting to see if something might change so he wouldn’t be forced to leave and lose so much. Six or seven months went by, and everything suddenly got hectic when the government declared it was nationalizing American businesses in Cuba . . . The following day Violeta told me about their travel plans. They were off within a month, and now it was for real, because the next Sunday Alcides was intending a crucial step: he was going to take her home and introduce her formally to his children, who were now adolescents, and tell them of his decision to marry her.

  Never for one moment did I think that that afternoon I was talking to my friend Catalina Basterrechea, Lina Beautiful Eyes for the last time . . . Apart from the political complications, which she didn’t understand, there wasn’t a cloud on her horizon; on the contrary, it was all light and promises of bliss. What fucking shit, right? I’ve wondered a thousand times why they didn’t just say to hell with all this and leave Cuba two or three months earlier, happy, in love, with the best of their lives ahead of them . . .

  I found out what happened the following Monday, when I went to Violeta’s flat to see how she’d got on in what we’d dubbed her opening night in the big world of the Montes de Ocas. When I got there, I was surprised to see strange things going on and found myself face to face with Nemesia Moré, Alcides’s secretary. She received me as if I were a total stranger and asked me to leave immediately. “Who the fuck do you think you are? This is my friend’s house,” I started to reply, and the bitch blurted out, as hard as nails: “Your friend’s dead and you’re not welcome here . . .” I was in a state of shock and barely managed to ask her what had happened. “She’s committed suicide,” she said, and told me: “Don’t ring Mr Alcides, he’s very upset and it would be best to leave him in peace.”

  As Alcides Montes de Oca was still Alcides Montes de Oca in Cuba, and had kept Lina’s private life out of the public eye, there was only a brief mention of her suicide in a couple of newspapers and the whole matter was shelved. I was desperate to find out what had happened, but the people in the know sealed their lips. Eventually, thanks to a lad I knew who lived near my place and was in the police I did find out a bit more: Lina had used cyanide to commit suicide. But why? Why kill herself when she was at her happiest? Because she’d given up singing? That was impossible, it must have been hard, but she did so of her own free will. Because she had to leave Cuba? No, she wanted to leave, was leaving with her man and the promise of marriage . . . The only explanation was that something had gone wrong between her and Alcides. I couldn’t imagine what that might be, if he was now preparing to take her on publicly as his new wife.

  I was desperate and started following Alcides. I needed to speak to him, to know what he knew, and find out why Lina had dared do something so terrible. I called several times but he’d never come to the phone,
I sent him messages via a couple of friends but he didn’t reply and in the end I started trailing him. One day I saw him leave home, in his Chrysler, driven by his chauffeur and I followed him in my car as far as Old Havana where I saw him enter the Western Union offices and followed him in. When he saw me next to him, he barely seemed surprised, but looked grim. I thought for a moment that he was going to cry. He’d delivered a few messages, picked up others and we left. As he was opening his car door, he said: “Lina broke my heart. I was going to give her everything, why did she have to do that?”

  Without a second glance, he got into his car, which turned the corner and disappeared from sight. It was the last time I saw Alcides Montes de Oca and the last time I tried to find out why the girl we all thought so happy ended it all, as if she were living out one of those boleros she so liked to sing.

  A primitive jungle instinct urged the Count to ask the questions he’d been stifling as he went further into the tragedy of frustrated love recounted by that elderly woman. But when he saw the tears flooding the deep wrinkles on Carmen Argüelles’s face, he held back, restrained by the sorrow brought by death: he decided to live with his doubts. Although the woman’s confession rounded out a story that still lacked clinching detail, he finally had something firm in place and a first mystery he’d definitively cleared up. In effect, Violeta del Río had died more than forty years ago, as he already knew, but had done so under her real name of Catalina Basterrechea, and that circumstance helped by the last ripples from Don Alcides Montes de Oca’s muscle, explained the strict oblivion into which her other ego, Violeta del Río the singer, had been relegated a few months before.

  Mario Conde promised to be back in a few days and said goodbye to the old woman, who now seemed even more feeble and shrunken, as if that descent into her past had worn her out physically. He stopped on the doorstep, then went back inside. He put his hand in his pocket and took out a few notes: one hundred and forty pesos, all he was carrying on him. He placed them gently in her lap.