Havana Noir Read Online Free PDF Page B

certificates, describing them like in a newsreel. “Ah, this one, this one’s from the KGB, a year-long course in Moscow! And this other one, from the second-rate Czech intelligence agency! And that one, from the very disciplined German police force!” He coughed and spit out the window, then pointed to the map of Havana. “Do you see those circles? Do you? Those are the exits from the sewers, the manholes. I was the first to discover the plague, the first to declare that the city was being overrun by Jews, those same Jews who fled from their Havana synagogues just as the Berlin Wall was being built. They’ve gone underground, where they’ve turned into vermin who suck the blood of the people!”
    From then on I became a regular visitor. It was from Reinita Príncipe that I learned her husband had been an officer who’d traveled the world taking courses in espionage and counter-espionage, and that he’d been forced into retirement after he threw a tantrum at a meeting of generals and insisted there were dwarves in the Havana sewers.
    “Then the wall fell,” Reinita explained, “and he never got well again. He lives cursing Vaclav Havel, who he met in Prague.”
    Lucecita didn’t like that I visited every day, much less the manner I had about me. I always showed up loaded down with canned sausages. Her mother pushed her to be polite but she was determined to sour my existence. At the dinner table—because in a month’s time I was having dinner there regularly—she’d roll her eyes back and make nasty comments about people who try to buy love. And all the while I was drooling for her, praising her more and more, blowing all of my savings. But she never gave me a break. She egged her father on to declare war against me. The old man began his campaign by threatening to go to his old comrades so that I’d be arrested as an agent of the synagogues.
    “Make yourself scarce,” my friend Jeremías counseled.
    That’s what I did, and what a terrible loneliness came over me! I didn’t have any desire to get back at her by being with some girl who sold love. I started to hate Havana. In the afternoons, I would go to Dos Hermanos and get drunk. The same stevedores were there, and the Chinese mulatta who had once made me come by the light of Morro Castle. They all touched my head.
    It wasn’t until a month later that my life took another turn. One Sunday afternoon, I ran into Pascualito at the entrance to the Packard. He told me he’d been waiting for me for a while. Discreetly, we made our way to an Andalusian bar on the Prado. We ordered two anisettes and then, in a low voice, he talked about the Great Grail, the Supreme Chief, and the problems they were having underground picking up TV transmissions. He asked if I was still hanging around the studios on Masón and San Miguel. When I told him about my romantic travails, he insisted I go back and dedicate myself to spying.
    “You will be very well paid,” he said.
    “But why me?” I asked. “There are all those dwarf acrobats there, the ones who work with Snow White. Surely you can contact one of them.”
    “They’re artists, and the Grail doesn’t trust artists,” Pascualito answered.
    I returned to Masón and San Miguel to try and regain Reinita Príncipe’s favor. She was very accepting, and thanks to her I became friends with producers, scenic artists, and video technicians. In just two weeks, I was able to lift some blueprints and a list of security guards. Reinita Príncipe turned a blind eye, banking on my promise that I would not make her pay her debt. Lucecita also made a radical change. She began to flirt with me and urged me to visit her at home again. I didn’t get as worked up this time, but there’s no doubt I did let myself fall for this unrequited love again.
    When I visited one evening, I came loaded down with provisions. They locked the old man in his room, Reinita lit some incense, and we all got drunk. Lucecita drank too much and