Read Online Havana Red by Leonardo Padura - Free Book Online

you doing here, you motherfucker?” And almost reluctantly he scoured the other tables, scenting possible reactions to the Count’s arrival. “Look, if this lot realize you’re a policeman and you start whispering to me, I’ll get a bucket of shit chucked over me . . .”
    â€œYou’re the whisperer,” said the Count at the top of his voice, as he grabbed the glass of rum from the table and despatched it in one gulp.
    Baby Face Miki didn’t dare stop him or take another look around; the Count smiled. He’d known him for almost twenty years and he’d not changed: a load of bollocks. When they were at school, Miki’d become a famous flirt and used to say he’d set the definitive record for girlfriends in one year – naturally, kissing always included – thanks to his immaculate features and clean complexion, on which the years had wrought a vicious toll: with more wrinkles than to be expected at thirty-eight, traces of late pimples and poorly distributed body fat, Miki – never again to be called Baby Face – tried to hide behind a luxuriant beard that contrasted with the scant hair over his forehead, equally mortal remains of what had once been arrogant blond locks. The passage from adolescence to adulthood had been, for Miki de Jeva, a devastating mutation. Nevertheless, despite everything and against all odds, Miki had turned out to be the only accepted writer from among his school friends keen on writing: a wretched novel and two books of particularly opportune stories had granted him that undeserved standing. He knew – as did the Count – that his literary fruits
were sentenced irrevocably to deepest oblivion, after their premeditated moment, much vaunted by certain critics and publishers for his writing about peasants and the need for cooperatives when every newspaper spoke of peasants and the need for cooperatives, and about anti-patriotic scum and emigrated filth, when such epithets echoed down the country’s streets in the summer of 1980 . . . Nevertheless, his Writers’ Union card said just that, writer, and every afternoon Miki took refuge in the Union bar to drink a few rums which, thought the Count, didn’t strictly belong to him.
    â€œWould you like us to speak elsewhere?” the lieutenant suggested, pained by the despair of this would-be author.
    â€œNo, don’t worry, nobody knows you here and the rum’s running out. Do you want a double?”
    The Count looked at the bar, where they were serving white Bocoy rum. Irritated, he acted as if he weren’t sure, perhaps wanting to bolster his confidence.
    â€œYes, I think that’s just what I need.”
    â€œGive me four pesos,” Miki said, holding out a hand.
    The Count smiled: of course, you shit-head, he thought, and gave him a ten-peso note.
    â€œA triple for me and a double for you.”
    While he waited for Miki, the Count lit a cigarette and tried to listen to the conversation of his nearest neighbours. There were three of them: a young but very greying mulatto, who talked non-stop, a fat bearded half-caste with a hump like a jerry-built camel; and a tall guy, with a bugger’s face which would have astounded Lombroso himself. Oh image of literature! They were enthusiastically slandering another writer whose recent novel had apparently enjoyed a lot of success and who wrote very popular articles in the newspapers, and were calling him a fucking populist.
Yes, they said, secreting bile on the bar floor, just imagine, he writes crime novels, interviews crooners and mooners, and writes stories about pimps and the history of rum: I tell you, he’s a fucking populist, and that’s why he wins so many prizes, and they changed topic in order to talk about themselves, writers really preoccupied by aesthetic values and reflections on social contradictions, when Miki returned with two glasses of rum.
    â€œI didn’t tell you . . . we