Havana Blue Read Free

slant-eyed creature, but she’s from Varona and
they already have their dudes; and then the bell rang, and on 1 September 1972 the high school gates opened in La Víbora, where I would experience so much.
    We were all almost enthusiastic about entering the cage, ah the first day at school; as if there weren’t enough space, some ran – mostly girls, naturally – towards the playground where wooden posts carried numbers to indicate where each group should line up. I was in number five, and only Rabbit joined me from our barrio, and he’d been with me since fifth grade. The playground filled up. I’d never seen so many people at the same school, I really hadn’t, and I started to look at the women in our group, to start preselecting a likely candidate. Reviewing them made me forget the sun, which was fucking burning it down, and then we sang the national anthem, and the headmaster climbed on the platform that was beneath the arch in the shade and began to speak into the microphone. First he threatened us: females, skirts below the knee and the right hem, that was why you were given the paper about buying the uniform when you enrolled; males, hair cut above the ears, no sideburns or moustaches; females, blouse inside the skirt, with a collar, no frippery, that was why . . .; males, standard trousers, no drainpipes or flares, this is a school not a fashion parade; females, stockings pulled up, not rolled down round the ankles – although that really suited them, even the skinny ones; males, first spot of indiscipline, even if it’s nothing serious, straight before the Military Committee, because this is a school and not the Torrens Reformatory; females and males: no smoking in the lavatories at break or any time; and yet again females and males . . . and the sun started to roast me alive. He went on talking in the shade, and
the second thing he did was to introduce the president of the SF.
    He climbed on the platform and displayed a dazzling smile. Colgate, Skinny must have thought, but I didn’t yet know the skinny lad behind me in the line. To get to be student president he must have been in twelfth or thirteenth grade, I later found out he was in thirteenth, and he was tall, almost fair-haired, with very light-coloured eyes – a faded ingenuous blue – and seemed freshly washed, combed, shaved, perfumed and out of bed and, despite his distance from us and the heat, he oozed self-confidence, when, by way of starting his speech, he introduced himself as Rafael Morín Rodríguez, president of the Student Federation of the René O. Reiné High School and a member of the Municipal Youth Committee. I remember him, the sun that gave me such a bad head and the rest, and thinking that that guy was a born leader: he talked and talked.
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    The lift doors opened slowly like the curtain in a fleapit, and only then did Lieutenant Mario Conde realize he wasn’t viewing that scene through dark glasses. His headache had almost gone, but the familiar image of Rafael Morín stirred recollections he’d thought lost in the dankest corners of his memory. The Count liked remembering, he had a shit-hot memory, Skinny used to say, but he’d have preferred another reason to remember. He walked along the corridor, feeling like sleep, not work, and when he came to the Boss’s office he fixed his pistol, which was about to drop from his belt.
    Maruchi, the woman in charge of the Boss’s office, had deserted the reception area, and he reckoned she
must be on her mid-morning break. He tapped on the glass door, opened it and saw Major Antonio Rangel behind his desk. He was listening carefully to something someone was telling him on the telephone, while stress made him shift his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. His eyes pointed the Count to the file open on his desk. The lieutenant shut the door and sat opposite his chief, waiting for the conversation to end.