Read Online Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura - Free Book Online Page B

Ernestico’s mellow voice and tranquil demeanour: some said he was a shitbag;
others reckoned he was a shitbag times two. “OK, but that’s past history. Now is what concerns me. You going to give me a hand?”
    Candito looked at his sharp nails for a moment. He’ll not say no, thought the Count.
    â€œAll right, all right, I’ll see what I can dredge up . . . But you know the usual: no names, as the Yanks say.”
    The Count smiled sweetly wanting to take it a step further.
    â€œDon’t do that on me, pal, if they’re pushing it to someone at Pre-Uni, there’ll be one hell of a scandal, what with a murder thrown in.”
    Candito thought for a moment. The Count was afraid of a no-go he could almost understand.
    â€œOne day you’ll get me burnt, guy, and no one will be there to drag me from the stake. By the time you get to me, you’ll need to send the vultures packing,” he replied, and the Count took a breath. He gulped another mouthful of rum and sought the best way to seal the deal.
    â€œWhile we’re about it, I’ve got a little number I’d like to lay . . . Are the shoes you’re making any good these days?”
    â€œSoft as peaches, pal, and a knock down at fifty little pesos for you. If you’re broke, I’ll give them away. What’s size your chick wear?”
    The Count smiled and shook his head.

    â€œFuck if I know what size she is, pal,” he answered and shrugged his shoulders, and thought how he’d ask the next woman he met her shoe-size before he glanced at her bum or tits. You never know when the info might come in useful.
    Â 
    Mario Conde, like almost everybody, owed his most distant memory of love to his nursery school teacher, a pale-cheeked, long-fingered young woman, who sprayed him with her breath when she took his hands and placed his fingers on the piano keyboard, while a gentle feeling of disquiet stirred in a vague spot between his stomach and knees. From then on, asleep or awake, the Count started dreaming about his teacher, and one evening he confessed to Grandfather Rufino that he wanted to grow up so he could marry that woman – to which the old man replied: “Me too.” Many years later, on the eve of his marriage, the Count discovered how that young woman about whom he’d never heard a word more after the summer holidays was back in the barrio. She’d arrived from New Jersey on a ten-day visit to her family and he decided to pay her a visit since, although he rarely recalled her now, he’d never been able to forget her entirely. And he was very pleased he did, because not even time, grey hair and flab had managed to erase the serene beauty of that teacher to whom he owed his first erection through touch, and a remote awareness of the necessity of love.

    Something about that woman, that he’d anticipated rather than experienced as a mere five-year-old when Grandfather Rufino took him round the fighting cock pits of Havana, had re-surfaced in the figure of Karina. It was nothing precise, because apart from his school mistress’s languid hands and unblemished skin, nothing else had survived in the policeman’s memory: it was rather a mood of calm, like a blue veil, created by a miraculous sensuality that was at once restrained and irrepressible. He had no choice in the matter: he’d fallen in love with Karina as he had with that teacher and, when he spied on the house where the girl lived, he imagined he could hear the hot rhythms of the saxophone she was playing, as she sat on the window wall while night-time Lenten gales played havoc with her hair. Seated on the ground, he caressed her feet and his fingers ran over every joint, every hard or smooth place on the soles of her feet, so his hands might possess every step that woman had taken in the world before landing in his heart. Now does she wear a four-and-a-half or a five?
    Â 
    â€œThat guy Pupy killed her, I