Havana Gold by Leonardo Padura Read Free Book Online Page B

how about setting my own right?
    â€œDo you really like being a policeman, Manolo?” he asked, almost without thinking.
    â€œI think I do, Conde. Besides, it’s all I know.”
    â€œBut if you like it, you must be mad. Like me.”
    â€œI like a bit of madness,” Manolo confessed crossing the railway line without slowing down. “Just like that headmaster.”
    â€œWhat did you make of that guy?”
    â€œI don’t know, Conde, I don’t think I like him, but don’t take any notice of me. It’s only an impression.”
    â€œAs impressions go, mine’s no different.”
    â€œHey, Conde, I’ll tell Adriana eight-thirty, right?”
    â€œThat’s what I said, Manolo. Hey, you’re a man who says he’s had lots of women, did one ever play the saxophone?”
    Manolo slowed down imperceptibly, looked at his boss and smiled: “With her mouth?”
    â€œGo screw yourself!” yelped the Count, also smiling. There’s no respect these days, he told himself, as he lit a cigarette a couple of blocks from home. He felt better
now: he’d be free for almost three hours and would sit down and write. Write whatever. Just write.
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    I insisted on the Beatles. It may be your cassette recorder and you can kick up a fuss, but I want to hear the bloody Beatles, Strawberry Fields is the best song in the history of the world, I defended my tastes, adamantly, and why the fuck did you ring? He said, Dulcita. He was so skinny at times it seemed he wouldn’t be able to speak and his Adam’s apple moved, as if he were swallowing. OK, and what else? Dulcita’s off. She’s off, he said and suddenly I couldn’t decide where the hell she was off to: home, school, the moon, to the Donkey’s Back, when I realized I was the only donkey there; off means you’re leaving; skedaddling, making a quick, swift exit, going off, with one possible destination: Miami. Going off means not coming back. But why? She rang me last night to tell me. I’ve practically not seen her since I had that row with her. She sometimes rings me, or I ring her – we’re still good mates in spite of the way I shat on her with Marián – to tell me: I’m off.
    The evening light shone through the window and painted the room golden. Strawberry Fields was now a sad song and we looked at each other without saying a word. What was there to say? Dulcita was the best in our gang, the defender of the meek and needy, we’d say to rile her, the only one who listened to everybody
else and the one we all loved because she knew what love was: she was one of us, and suddenly she was off. Maybe we’d never see her again to be able to say, Fuck, how beautiful Dulcita is, never be able to write to her, talk to her or even remember her, because she’s off and anyone who’s off is sentenced to lose everything, even the space they occupy in the memories of friends. But why? I don’t know, he said, I didn’t ask: that’s beside the point, the point is that she is going, he said and stood up in front of the window and the bright light made it impossible for me to see his face as he said, Shit, shit, shit, she’s leaving, and I realized he might cry on cue and would be right to, because even our memories would be incomplete, and he said: I’ll see her tonight. Me too, I told him. But we never did: Dulcita’s mother told us, She’s ill, she’s asleep, but we knew she wasn’t asleep or ill. The fact is she’s off, I thought, and it was a long time before I understood why: Dulcita, the perfect, the best, the woman who so often showed she was a man, a man ready for anything. We walked back, silent and sorrowful, and after we’d crossed the Highway I remember Skinny had said: Look, what a beautiful moon.
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    Conde had always thought he liked that barrio: the Casino Deportivo had been built in the fifties for a