Havana Fever Read online

  Pancho Carmona enjoyed a reputation as the provider of the bibliographical jewels most in demand. His business card pompously introduced him as a specialist in rare and valuable books, although his commercial tentacles reached into adjacent areas, including the plastic arts, furniture, Tiffany jewellery and the most eclectic of antiques. Three times a week Pancho provided a range of legal delights in the plaza de Armas, and on the other three days, in the reception room of his own home, on calle Amargura, he’d organize a kind of bookshop only open to trustworthy or highly recommended customers. One month he’d invite them to sit on Louis XVI furniture, another on Second Empire armchairs and the next on comfortable Liberty sofas, always in the shadow of classic Cuban painting or drawing, lit by restored art nouveau lamps and surrounded by Murano or Bohemian glassware, keen to voyage to foreign parts. All his trade colleagues knew that neither place exhibited his most sought-after books, although nobody knew for sure where Carmona, a man whose best contacts came straight to him, as soon they arrived from Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Miami and New York, kept his secret hoard.

  Pancho had lived for twenty-five years on his salary as an industrial designer and had begun to specialize in the book trade when it took off as a profitable line, and the sales of records, his business at the time, took a turn for the worse, coinciding with the start of a Crisis that soon resulted in a bountiful harvest as far as he was concerned. Unlike other booksellers, Carmona had had the foresight from the start to see that the real money would never be in the modest exercise of buying books for two pesos to sell them for ten. The real challenge, he believed, was to take a leap into the void of really serious investment. Consequently, soon after embarking on this trade, he risked taking out a loan, once he’d sold his all-Soviet television, refrigerator and air conditioning acquired thanks to his former status as a model worker, in order to assemble the necessary funds to purchase bibliographical rarities that had been hidden for years and were now being disinterred by desperate hunger. He paid good prices to dispel the doubts of skeletal owners and fend off rival competition. Within a few months Pancho had accumulated several dozen exquisite volumes, which he put on sale at fair but high prices and, endlessly patient, on the verge of starvation, he sat down and waited for the spark to ignite. Fate smiled on him on one day in 1994 when he was close to suicide: a buyer flew in from Madrid and handed over $12,000 for a small job-lot that included A General and Natural History of the Indies, by Fernández de Oviedo, published in Madrid in 1851; the Picturesque Island of Cuba, by Andueza, also from Madrid, but from 1841; the Political Essay on the Island of Cuba, by Baron Humboldt, in two 1826 Parisian tomes; the classic Types and Customs from the Island of Cuba, illustrated by Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, in its 1891 Havana edition; the extraordinary Cuban edition of The Comedies of Don Pedro Calderón de la Barca, published in Havana in 1839 and illustrated by Alejandro Moreau and Federico Mialhe; and the six beautiful, much sought after volumes of the History of Cuban Families, written by Francisco Javier de Santa Cruz y Mallén, the Count of Jaruco and Santa Cruz del Mopox, in the substantial 1940-43 edition.

  From then on the omnipotent Carmona specialized in buying and selling books that could fetch healthy prices in European and North American auctions. He would be visited at home, almost daily, by desperate owners of family relics that had survived previous earthquakes, now eager, at the very least, to hear decent estimates for their books, furniture and adornments, and, along the path he’d cleared for them, by the most serious buyers who’d come to the island in search of the young girls in blossom only Carmona could confidently supply.

  Years in the catacombs of business had turned Pancho Carmona into a vademecum colleagues consulted to get their bearings in terms of prices, and the possible existence, whereabouts and potential sources of supply or sale. As a genuine specialist, this bookseller only offered advice on the three days of the week he worked in the plaza de Armas, and charged his colleagues a modest, set fee: an invitation to a coffee on the terrace of La Mina restaurant, down a side street leading from the plaza de Armas.

  “One coffee and two beers,” Yoyi Pigeon ordered when they’d sat down at the table nearest the entrance. From there Pancho could keep a watchful eye on his stall that was being looked after by his nephew whose job it was to set up and to take the books back at the end of the day to his house on calle Amargura where belying that street name he at least had little reason to feel bitterness.

  “The coffee’s for me, Lento,” Pancho told the waiter to avoid the torture of an over-watery infusion. “We’ve not seen you for a while, Conde,” he said, lighting the cigarette he always started to smoke before drinking coffee.

  “Trade’s going downhill, Pancho. It’s very hard to find the necessary—”

  “Yes, it’s getting hard. There’s nowhere to mine any more. Tutto è finito,” he agreed, but Pigeon euphorically interrupted his lamentation.

  “Well, Conde’s found a little gold mine.”

  “Really?” responded Pancho, long since immune to rushes of excitement.

  “How do you fancy a first edition of Voltaire’s Candide?” Pigeon exclaimed. “Or a Las Casas from 1552, or The Inca’s La Florida from 1605, and Valdés’s History of the Island of Cuba? And how about the thirteen volumes of Ramón de la Sagra’s History, all shiny and new, with all the illustrations intact?...

  The gleam in Pancho Carmona’s eyes expanded at the mention of each title and he finally blurted out: “Fuck! When do I get a list of what you’ve got?”

  “Nothing Pigeon just referred to is for sale,” interjected the Count. “We’ve got other things to interest you—”

  “Within the week,” retorted Pigeon, ignoring his partner’s murderous looks. “When I say it’s a mine . . .”

  “See if you can find a copy with illustrations intact of The Book of Sugar Mills and the 1832 edition of Heredia’s poetry. I’ve got a buyer who’s desperate for them and he’ll pay the asking price without protesting . . . I’ll seal the deal for ten percent.”

  “What might the Heredia fetch then?” enquired the Count.

  “That edition, the most complete and set by Heredia himself, now fetches upwards of a $1,000 in Cuba. Abroad . . . 3,000 plus. And if it’s signed . . . So, where the hell did you find this library?”

  Pigeon smiled, glanced at the Count and then at Pancho.

  “What’s the look on my face telling you, Panchón?”

  The other smiled as well.

  “I get you. When among sharks . . .”

  “The only problem is that this fellow doesn’t want to get his fingers dirty.” said Yoyi pointing at the Count.

  “And never did want to,” the Count retorted, pouring the icecold beer into his glass.

  “Come on, Pancho, give him a reason to change his mind,” pleaded Pigeon and the bookseller smiled.

  “To change his mind or give himself a heart attack?... How about this then: guess what I flogged the other day?” he lowered his voice. “Both volumes of the 1851 and 1856 first edition of Felipe Poey’s Reminiscences on the Natural History of the Island of Cuba . . . with the ex libris of Julián del Casal.”

  “You’re kidding?” Yoyi reacted in shock. “How much?”

  “Two thousand green ones, I didn’t want any hassle . . .” and he smiled, lifting his coffee to his lips.

  “So where did you fish that out from?” the Count enquired.

  Pancho shook his head at the naivety of the question.

  “Fine . . . fine . . . what goes around comes around.”

  “Anyway you bring your list, I’m sure we can do business.”

  “What do you do with all that cash, Pancho?” Yoyi continued, intrigued, and unable to hide his admiration.

  “That’s not for public consumption, my boy. But I dream: I dream I will have a real bookshop one day, with lots of books, lots of light, a café at the back, I see myself sitting there, like a pasha, with my coffee, my cigarette, recommending books . . . While I’m waiting for t
hat dream to come true, I’ll sell from my front room and that wooden stand you see over there.”

  “I want to be like you when I’m older, Panchón, I swear I do,” Pigeon declared and the Count knew this they weren’t empty words.

  “OK, that’s enough bullshit,” the Count interjected. “Pancho, can you tell me anything about a single called Be gone from me. I think it’s a 78 . . .”

  “It’s a 45, by one Violeta del Río. The Gema company recorded it in 1958 or at the beginning of 1959, I think. Be gone from me on one side, by the Expósito brothers, and on the other You’ll remember me, by Frank Domínguez. I used to have a copy and it took a while to get rid of it.”

  As he listened to the description of a record that finally assumed some kind of physical reality, the Count felt unexpectedly jubilant, as if Pancho Carmona had breathed vital life into his strange quest for knowledge.

  “Did you ever listen to it?” he asked.

  “No, I never felt like listening . . .”

  “Who did you sell it to?”

  “I don’t remember right now . . .”

  “Of course you remember, think for a moment.”

  “Lento, another coffee,” Yoyi anticipated. “And it’s for Pancho. And two more lagers . . .”

  Pancho lit up another cigarette.

  “What about the singer? What was she like?” Conde asked anxiously, lifting his smoke to his lips.

  “Not the faintest fucking idea. I never knew anything about her . . . I got my hands on the record about fifteen years ago . . . Let’s see,” and Pancho Carmona shut his eyes, so he could see, he claimed: perhaps he was reading the lists of purchases and sales engraved on his brain. Finally, he raised his eyelids. “Got it, I sold it in a job-lot to the blind guy who writes about music . . .”

  “Rafael Giró?”

  “That’s your man . . .”

  “What else do you know about the singer, Pancho?”

  “Zilch. Or do you reckon I should know all there is to know about everything?”

  “For two one-dollar coffees you might dredge a bit more up?” said Conde, slapping the shoulder of the oracle of calle Amargura, the man who dreamt of owning a fantastic bookshop where they’d also sell the best coffee in Havana.

  That Chevrolet, the four-door, pillarless Bel Air model, manufactured in 1956 was considered by experts to be one of the most “macho” cars ever to roll along Havana’s ravaged streets. Driving it, gently pushing the horizontal gear lever, listening to that melodious combination of speed and power, feeling it slide along, robust, confident and proud, welcoming the breeze blowing through windows broad as an ecstatic smile, represented for Yoyi Pigeon the sensation closest to an erotic climax he’d ever experienced.

  When Yoyi bought it two years ago, that Bel Air 56 was already a striking automobile, thanks to its classically distinguished lines and immaculate chroming, as a result of always being kept in a garage. It came into the newly graduated engineer’s possession, thanks to the $7,000 he’d earned from a sale of a Goya painting that easily changed hands and flew off to an unknown destination. His uncle, the most renowned mechanic specializing in that brand of car – about to be dubbed Paco Chevrolet in Havana – focused his much-prized wisdom on converting his nephew’s car into a holy relic on wheels. He tuned the engine in an attempt to maximize its horse-power, fitted it out with genuine spare parts, and added filters, carburettors and sensors to enhance its mechanical refinement and purring efficiency as a perfect piece of engineering, created for eternity. Then, the body-work was sandpapered to the tinplate, giving it a dazzling sheen when the car was repainted with the special metallic glow paint recommended by Ferrari, in a combination of sky blue for bonnet, boot, mudguards and doors, and brilliant white for the roof and the wedge-shaped side panels. The final elegant touch was achieved by halogenous headlights from Miami and white Firestone tyres from Mexico, so that this 1956 Bel Air Chevrolet was probably more magnificent than the one that emerged long ago from the automotive plant in Detroit, when its manufacturers could never have imagined that fifty years later it would still be the most beautiful, well-balanced, glamorous car that had ever rolled over the Earth.

  The Bel Air zipped along the avenue of the Malecón and, sitting back in the high-backed beige imitation pigskin seat, Conde divided his attentions between the Marc Anthony music – broadcast from the CD player hidden in the glove compartment and amplified through the quadraphonic audio system Pigeon had incorporated, without sacrificing the original Motorola radio, luxuriating in its privileged position on the dashboard – and the contemplation of a tranquil sea, gilded by the last rays of that summer evening’s sun. The tropical sea would always remind him of his fading dream: of owning a small wood cabin, on the edge of a beach, where he could devote the mornings to his imagination and writing one of those novels he still planned, the evenings to fishing and strolling along the sand, and the nights to enjoying the company and moist heat of a woman, smelling of seaweed, sea breezes and the sweet scent of night-time secretions.

  “Yoyi,” his words exploded uncontrollably, “is there anything you’d really like and were never able to get?”

  Pigeon smiled, keeping his eyes on the avenue.

  “What’s this about, man? Loads of things . . . I swear . . .”

  “Of course, but doesn’t anything stick out?”

  The lad shook his head, as if denying something only he knew.

  “Before I bought this car I’d have given my life to have a Bel Air. Now I’ve got one, I’m not sure . . . I think . . . Yes, got it, I’d love to see Queen play live. With Freddie Mercury, of course . . .”

  “Great,” conceded the Count, who’d expected a less spiritual reply.

  Pigeon’s frustrated dream spoke of a sensibility lost or atrophied by the struggle for survival, and went back to a state of innocence before he’d turned ferocious predator.

  “And come to think of it,” continued Pigeon after a silence, “I’d also have liked to know how to dance properly. I can swear to that. I love music but I’m a terrible dancer.”

  “Ditto,” confessed the Count, probing further. “Have you ever thought about what you want from life?”

  Yoyi looked at him for a moment.

  “Don’t go so deep into things, man. You know that here we’ve got to live the day-to-day and not think too much. That’s where you get it wrong, you think too much . . . Take now for instance, why you got such a bee in your bonnet about what happened to Violeta del Río?”

  Conde gave the sea a farewell glance, before they started their descent down the ramp of the tunnel under the river.

  “It must be because I’m an obsessive-compulsive . . .”

  “And what else, what else?” cried Yoyi.

  “I still don’t know,” the Count allowed. “Maybe it’s just curiosity, a leftover from when I was a policeman, or something I haven’t yet worked out . . . You know what? Those stories and characters from the fifties are my Bel Air. I can’t get enough of going back over what people remember about it. It fascinates me. But what most intrigues me about her story is the strange way she retired and disappeared at the height of her fame, and that no one now remembers her, you know . . . So why did you want to drive me to Rafael Giró’s place?”

  “I don’t know . . . to keep you company, I suppose. You’re the maddest, arsiest character I know, but I like your company. Know what, man? You’re the only straightforward fellow I ever deal with in this and all my other businesses. You’re like a bloody creature from Mars. As if you weren’t for real, I mean.”

  “Is this praise, coming from you?” enquired the Count.

  “More or less . . . You know, we live in a jungle. As soon as you leave your shell, you’re surrounded by vultures, people set on fucking you up, stealing your money, getting laid with your woman, informing on you and making sure you get busted so they can make a buck . . . A bunch of people who don’t want to complicate their lives, and most just want out, to cross the water, even
if it’s to fucking Madagascar. And fuck anyone else . . . And don’t expect too much from life.”

  “That’s not what the newspapers say,” Conde egged him on, to see if he’d jump, but Yoyi only seethed.

  “What newspapers? I bought one once, I wiped my butt on it, and it left it covered in shit, I swear . . .”

  “You ever hear talk of Che’s New Man?”

  “What’s that? Where can you buy one?”

  When they reached the crossroads of 51 and 64 Streets Pigeon turned right and looked for the number Pancho Carmona had given them.

  “That’s where the blind guy lives. Look, he’s in the doorway,” he said as he parked the car next to the pavement. “Don’t slam the door, man, this is a real car, not one of your Russian tin-cans on wheels . . .”

  Conde let the car door go and watched it gently swing to, pulled by its own weight. He crossed the small garden and greeted Rafael Giró. He explained how they were friends of Pancho Carmona, and appealed to his vanity by saying he’d read his book on mambo and thought it excellent.

  “So why this visit? Do you want to sell me a book?” asked Rafael, who didn’t stop his wooden chair from rocking. His eyes were like two powerful, round lamps behind the thick concentric lenses of his cheap, poor imitation tortoiseshell spectacles.

  “No, it’s not that . . . Pancho told us he sold you a record by a bolero singer, Violeta del Río, about fifteen years ago . . .”

  “The Lady of the Night,” said Rafael just as Pigeon joined them.

  “You heard of her then?’ he asked cheekily, flopping on an armchair before he’d even been invited to sit down.

  “Of course, I have. Or do you think I’m one of those musicologists – at least that’s what they call themselves – who talk about music they’ve never listened to and haven’t written an effing book in all their effing lives?... Please take a seat,” he said finally, addressing the Count who sat down in one of the armchairs.