Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura Read Free Book Online

of that performance space. The Count looked at him for a moment, to see if such a change were possible. Possibly, but he’d take some convincing.
    â€œIf only. They sacked ours for fraud.”
    â€œYes, we all know about him.”
    â€œBut what nobody said was that several teachers were implicated. They threw out the headmaster and two heads of department, who were apparently the ones most involved in the affair. Perhaps the odd one of those teachers is still festering here.”
    â€œYou trying to alarm me?”

    â€œI’m just telling you the truth, maybe because that headmaster got rid of the best teacher we had, one who taught Spanish and did things the way Lissette did. She preferred to be with us and taught lots of people to read . . . Have you read Hopscotch ? She thought it was the best book ever and said so in such a way that for many years I believed her. But I don’t know if these youths are very different. Do they still smoke in the lavatories and play truant over the wall in the PE yard?”
    The headmaster tried to smile and took a few steps towards the middle of the playground.
    â€œDid you truant?”
    â€œAsk Julián the guard-dog, the caretaker on the door. He probably still remembers me.”
    Manolo padded stealthily over, and stood next to his boss, but a long way from the conversation. Conde knew he must be eying up the girls, enjoying the scent of so many maidenheads under threat or freshly sacrificed, and then imitated him, but only for a few seconds, because he immediately felt old, terribly remote from those young blossoming girls, their yellow smocks cut to their thighs, cool as he would never be again.
    â€œWell, I do apologize, but the fact is I . . .”
    â€œDon’t worry, headmaster,” replied the Count, smiling at him for the first time. “We must be off. But I’d like to ask you a question . . . a difficult one, as you might
say. Have you heard any rumours about your youngsters smoking marijuana?”
    The headmaster’s smiling face, which had expected another kind of difficult question, turned into a caricature of a bad frown. The Count nodded: yes, you heard me aright.
    â€œHey, why do you ask?”
    â€œNo reason in particular, just to find out whether they are really that different.”
    The man thought for a moment before answering. He seemed at a loss, but the Count knew he was searching for the most politically tactful response.
    â€œI really don’t think so. At least I don’t believe it to be the case, though anything can happen at a party in their barrios, I don’t know if the drop-outs smoke . . . But I don’t think so. They maybe couldn’t care less and are rather frivolous, but I wouldn’t say they were evil, you know.”
    â€œNor would I,” said the Count shaking the headmaster’s hand.
    They walked towards the exit where several students were trying to persuade Julián the caretaker to let them out on a really urgent errand. No, don’t go spinning tall stories. If you don’t have a headmaster’s note then nobody’s leaving, Julián was surely telling them, repeating the spiel he’d been rehearsing the past thirty years. So, they’re not so different, it’s the same old game, thought
the Count, who, as he walked past the caretaker, looked him in the eye again, and while the man was opening the gate to let them out, he said: “Julián, it’s me the Count, the one who used to get out over the back to go and hear the episodes of Guaytabó,” and he happily left the past to return to the gusts in the present blowing away the last spring blossom from the majaguas . Only then did he notice that they’d cut down the two trees nearest to the steps, beneath which he’d won a couple of girls to his love. Sad, isn’t it?
    Â 
    â€œI’m sorry, but I’m not free till about seven,” and the Count thought that