Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura Read Free Book Online Page A

562, he found a page of newsprint that had been folded in half and, with the care inculcated by his experience as a bookseller and policeman, he carefully extracted it to take a look.
    “What have you got there?” enquired Carlos.
    Because it had been kept out of the light and air, the magazine page, roughly fifteen by ten inches, had preserved its original light greenish colour. Conde found the name of the publication at the foot of the page: Vanidades , May 1960. The facing page advertised new General Electric washing machines on sale in Sears, El Encanto and Flogar. Convinced the paper carried another more substantial message, he opened it out and for the first time looked into the dark eyes of Violeta del Río.
    “I’m not sure . . . ‘Violeta del Río says farewell’ . . . Fuck, Skinny, take a look at this woman.”
    They’d printed a full-page photograph of Violeta del Río, sheathed in gold lamé – the Count assumed, although he’d never touched lamé – that it fitted her like a snake’s skin. While suggesting the presence of wild breasts, the material also revealed a pair of firm legs and cut back the evidence of forceful thighs opening out from a slim, tempting waistline. Her 1950s-style black, slightly wavy hair cascaded down to her shoulders, framing a smoothskinned face that highlighted her thick, sensual mouth, and eyes that now stared magnetically and vigorously at him.
    “Hell, what a specimen!” agreed Skinny. “Who was she?”
    “Let me see . . .” and he read, jumping from line to line: “ ‘Violeta del Río . . . the greatest singer of boleros . . . the Lady of the Night . . . revealed at the end of a wonderful performance that it was her last . . . Owner and leading lady at the Cabaret Parisién . . . At the pinnacle of her career . . . She had just recorded the promotional single Be gone from me , as a taster for her LP Havana Fever . . .’ You ever heard of her?”
    “No, never,” confessed Skinny. “But you know what those magazines were like. They probably wouldn’t recognize her in her own bathtub but they make out she was the Queen of Sheba.”
    “Yeah, probably. But I have heard her name somewhere,” responded the Count, not realizing his gaze was still transfixed by the dark eyes of that sultry, exultant woman in her early twenties, her frozen image from long ago still generating real, live heat. Josefina strutted back sporting the dress dotted with tiny flowers that she kept for her most important outings: her periodic visits to the doctor. The old lady had gathered her hair up, painted her lips a faint but shiny colour and now smiled shyly.
    “Well, meet the Lady of Hot Nights in Víbora,” quipped the Count.
    “You look great, Mum,” came the compliment from Skinny, who immediately asked: “Hey, you ever heard of Violeta del Río, a bolero singer from the fifties?”
    Josefina lifted a small handkerchief to her upper lip.
    “No, I can’t say . . .”
    “What did I tell you, Conde? She was a complete unknown . . .”
    “Yes, probably... But I’ve heard of her somewhere or other . . .” and added: “Let’s go out the front, Tinguaro will be here any minute now.”
    “Tinguaro?” asked Carlos.
    “Yeah, the guy who used to be in the police. He’s set up as a cab driver and sells Montecristo, Cohiba and Rey del Mundo cigars, just the same or even better than those from the factory, and he hires out a bunch of painters who leave houses, blocks or mausolea gleaming like new pins. And he finds them their paint!”
2 nd October
My dear:
My only hope is that when this letter reaches you it finds you well, so far from here and yet so near. So near to my heart and yet so far from my hands that can’t reach you, although every heartbeat feels you, as if you were here, next to my bosom, which you should never have forsaken.
You cannot imagine what these days without sight of you have meant, made worse by my inability to calculate how long our separation will last.