Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura Read Free Book Online Page B

Every hour, every minute I think about you, because everything here brings you to mind, everything exists because you existed and gave your breath to everything, to everybody, but particularly to me.
When it’s still hot, and I go into the garden in search of a cool breeze and see the foliage of the trees you planted over the years, I feel that that breath of air, filtered through the sharp rustling leaves of the mamey, the whispering custard apple and faintly tinkling leaves of the old ceiba (your ceiba, do you remember how joyfully you greeted its first flowers every summer?), is a part of you coming to me from distant parts, and I dream that perhaps a particle of that air was once inside you and, summoned by my solitude, flew across the sea to console and nourish me and keep me alive for you.
My love, how are you? How do you feel? How have you spent your first days over there? Have you seen friends and colleagues? I know that place never appealed, that you preferred life here, but if you can think of this absence as a parenthesis in your life, the distance may seem more tolerable, and you will connect better with me. (For I like to think this time I spend here will be just that: a parenthesis in a passionate love that has been painfully truncated, but which will emerge strengthened and go on to a better finale). Don’t you agree?
There is little to report from here. Paralysed as I am, I feel I have become the enemy of time that refuses to pass, that prolongs every hour and forces me to look at my diary several times a day, as if I could find the answers I crave in its cold numbers. The feeling of immobility is even starker because I have not stepped outside the house since you left. What I need to remember you and feel you close is inside here, while the street is the realm of chaos, oblivion, haste, war on the past and, above all, of people jubilant at the changes, cheerful, ecstatic even at what they are confident will come to them in their naïve excitement, never thinking about the terrible demands the unquestioning faith they now profess will soon impose. My only hope is that, as your father would say, nothing lasts very long in this country: we are inconsistent by nature, and what now seems like a devastating earthquake, will break up tomorrow like a glittering carnival parade.
Worst of all, however, is feeling the emptiness that floats between the walls of this house, dominated by silence ever since the children stopped chattering and by the absence of your spirit that distinguished this space which seems huge, where I feel disoriented by so many absences.
I’ve had little recent news of your son. I know he’s in some out-of-theway corner of the island, making the most of his revolutionary exploits. I imagine him lean and happy, for he is forging his life and his desires with that character of steel he inherited from your blood. On the other hand, your daughter seems withdrawn, as if she were sad, and with good reason, because she always felt closer to the family (despite the respect your aloofness inspired in her) and your departure has snatched from her any hope of one day enjoying what should be hers by natural right. (Forgive me, I had to say this.) Luckily, she spends most of the day working, which makes me think that is how she tries to distance herself from her home: by losing herself in her own activities, as if she wanted to flee from something that was persecuting her, by surrendering herself (she too!) to the new life in a country where everything seems set on change, beginning with the people.
So, when will you ring me? I know that after the nationalization of the telephone company communications are going from bad to worse, but you ought to make the effort: you’re not like your grandfather. I’ll always remember him, the poor old man who always thought talking down a phone to a person who was far away was so unreal he refused to use the telephone to the day he died and forbad his friends from