Excerpt of Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura
(Page 7 of 13)
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“Of course we won’t, Dionisio,” she assured him.
“I’m glad that we understand each other,” nodded the Count,
moved by the naivety of the heroic Dionisio, who thought in pesos,
whilst he calculated similar figures, but in dollars. “Let’s do it this
way. I’ll choose twenty to thirty books that will sell well, although
they’re not particularly valuable. I’ll separate them out now and
come for them tomorrow with the money. After that I’d like to
check the whole library, so I can tell you what I’d be interested in
taking, what books would interest no buyer, and which books can’t,
or rather shouldn’t, be sold, right? But first I’d like to hear the
whole story, if you don’t mind, that is . . . I’m sorry to insist, but a
library that has books like those I’ve just fished out and that’s been
untouched for forty-three years . . .”
Dionisio Ferrero looked at his sister, and the colourless woman
stared back at him, nibbling the skin on her fingers. Then she
swung her head round towards the Count: “Which one? The story
behind the library or the one explaining why we’re selling now?”
“Isn’t it the same one, with a beginning and an end?”
“When the Montes de Ocas left Cuba, Mummy and I stayed on
in this house, one of the most elegant in El Vedado . . . as you
can still see, after all this time. Mr Alcides Montes de Oca, who
had initially supported the Revolution, realized that things were
going to change more than he’d bargained for and in September
1969, when they started taking over US companies, he headed
north with just his two children, as his wife had died four or five
years earlier, in 1956, and he hadn’t remarried. Although business
hadn’t gone well under Batista, Mr Alcides still had lots and lots of
money; his own, and what he’d inherited from his deceased wife,
Alba Margarita, who was a Méndez-Figueredo, the family that
owned two sugar mills in Las Villas among countless other things
. . . And it was then he suggested to Mummy and me that we could
go with him, if we wished. Just imagine, Mummy was his right arm
in all his business affairs and on top of that had been like a sister to
him as well. She’d even been born in this household; that is, in the
house the Montes de Ocas owned in El Cerro before they built this
one, because Mummy was born in 1912 and this house was finished
in 1922, after the war, which was when the Montes de Ocas were
at their wealthiest. That was why they could afford to ship marble
from Italy and Belgium, tiles from Coimbra, wood from Honduras,
steel from Chicago, curtains from England, glass from Venice and
interior designers from Paris . . . At the time my grandparents were
gardener and laundry woman to the Montes de Oca family, and as
Mummy had been born in the house she was brought up almost as
a member of the family, as I said, like a sister to Mr Alcides, and
that’s how Mummy was able to study and even get her finishing
certificate. But when she was about to enter Teacher Training
College she made up her mind to stop studying and asked Mrs
Ana, the wife of Don Tomás and Mr Alcides’ mother, if they’d
let her work in the house as housekeeper or administrator, because
she fancied being here, surrounded by beautiful, pristine, expensive
things rather than life as a school teacher in a state school struggling
with snotty-nosed children for a hundred pesos a month. That was
when Mummy was nineteen or twenty, and by that time the Montes
de Ocas weren’t as rich, because they lost a lot of money in the 1929
Depression and because Don Serafín, who’d fought in the War of
Independence, and his son Don Tomás, a renowned lawyer, refused
to play along with Machado, who was a dictator by then. Machado
and his people made their lives impossible, and ruined lots of their
business operations, just as Batista did with Mr Alcides, although
before Batista’s coup d’état Mr Alcides had made a fortune in deals
he made during the Great War, so it didn’t matter so much if he
didn’t get a share in that degenerate’s big handouts . . . Ah, but I’m
losing my thread as usual . . . Well, the truth is that Mummy helped
Mr Alcides an awful lot. She dealt with all his papers, accounts,
income tax declarations, was his private secretary, and when his
wife, Mrs Alba Margarita, died, Mummy also took responsibility for
their children. Consequently, when Mr Alcides decided to leave, he
suggested to Mummy that we should go with him, but she wanted
time to think it over. She wasn’t immediately sure if we should go
or stay, because Dionisio, who’d joined the clandestine movement
to overthrow Batista when very young, and was a hundred per cent
behind the Revolution, had gone to educate the illiterate in the hills
of Oriente, and Mummy didn’t want to abandon him. How old
were you, Dionisio? Twenty-four? But by the same token Mummy
didn’t want to be separated from Jorgito and Anita, Mr Alcides’
children; she’d practically brought them up and she knew that Mr
Alcides would really need her when he started up other businesses
in the US. It was a tremendous dilemma. Mr Alcides told her to
take her time and that when she’d made her mind up, the doors to
his house, whatever it was like and wherever it was, would always
be open to us, and we could join him whenever we wanted. If we
stayed in Cuba, we could live here and he only asked one favour:
to look after the house, particularly the library and the two Sèvres
porcelain vases his grandmother, Doña Marina Azcárate, had
bought in Paris, as he couldn’t take them, although he was always
one who thought the Revolution would be short-lived and when it
collapsed he’d be able to return to his possessions and business here.
And if it didn’t and we didn’t leave, he asked the same favours of
us, until he, his son Jorgito or daughter Anita could fetch the books
and vases and they would be reunited with the family. Naturally,
Mummy promised that if he stayed in Miami, Mr Alcides could
be sure that when he returned everything would be in place, that
was her pledge, and it was a sacred commitment as far as she was
concerned . . .
Excerpted from Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura Copyright © 2009 by Leonardo Padura. Excerpted by permission of Bitter Lemon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher
