Leonardo Padura
Havana Blue
The third book in the Mario Conde Mystery series, 2007
© Leonardo Padura Fuentes, 2000
English translation © Peter Bush, 2007
For Lucía, with love and squalor
Author’s Note
The events narrated in this novel are not real, although they could have been, as reality itself has shown.
Any resemblance to real people and events is then merely that plus cussedness on the part of reality.
Consequently, nobody should feel alluded to in the novel. Equally, nobody should feel excluded if they do see some pertinent reference or other.
WINTER 1989
He whirled about. “Shut up, you!” he cried. We didn’t say anything, said the mountains. We didn’t say anything, said the sky. We didn’t say anything, said the wreckage. “All right, then,” he said, swaying. “See that you don’t.” Everything was normal.
Ray Bradbury, Perchance To Dream
possessing only
between heaven and earth
my memory, this time…
Eliseo Diego, Testament
I don’t have to think to know the most difficult step would be opening my eyes. If the morning sun, glinting brightly on the windowpanes, bathing the whole room in glorious light, struck them and sparked off the vital act of raising my eyelids, the slippery dough settling in my skull would be set to start a painful dance at the least movement of my body. To sleep, perchance to dream, he told himself, revisiting a phrase that had buzzed in his brain five hours earlier, when he had fallen on his bed and breathed in the deep dark aroma of solitude. In distant shadows he saw himself as a guilty penitent, kneeling before the pan, unloading wave after wave of apparently endless bitter amber vomit.