Our Man in Havana, Page 5

  ‘What gut?’

  ‘Kattegat. Of course he knew then the balloon had gone up. Started burning his papers. Put the ashes down the lav and pulled the chain. Trouble was – late frost. Pipes frozen. All the ashes floated up into the bath down below. Flat belonged to an old maiden lady – Baronin someone or other. She was just going to have a bath. Most embarrassing for our chap.’

  ‘It sounds like the Secret Service.’

  ‘It is the Secret Service, old man, or so the novelists call it. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about your chap Lopez. Is he reliable or ought you to fire him?’

  ‘Are you in the Secret Service?’

  ‘If you like to put it that way.’

  ‘Why on earth should I fire Lopez? He’s been with me ten years.’

  ‘We could find you a chap who knew all about vacuum cleaners. But of course – naturally – we’ll leave that decision to you.’

  ‘But I’m not in your Service.’

  ‘We’ll come to that in a moment, old man. Anyway we’ve traced Lopez – he seems clear. But your friend Hasselbacher, I’d be a bit careful of him.’

  ‘How do you know about Hasselbacher?’

  ‘I’ve been around a day or two, picking things up. One has to on these occasions.’

  ‘What occasions?’

  ‘Where was Hasselbacher born?’

  ‘Berlin, I think.’

  ‘Sympathies East or West?’

  ‘We never talk politics.’

  ‘Not that it matters – East or West they play the German game. Remember the Ribbentrop Pact. We won’t be caught that way again.’

  ‘Hasselbacher’s not a politician. He’s an old doctor and he’s lived here for thirty years.’

  ‘All the same, you’d be surprised … But I agree with you, it would be conspicuous if you dropped him. Just play him carefully, that’s all. He might even be useful if you handle him right.’

  ‘I’ve no intention of handling him.’

  ‘You’ll find it necessary for the job.’

  ‘I don’t want any job. Why do you pick on me?’

  ‘Patriotic Englishman. Been here for years. Respected member of the European Traders’ Association. We must have our man in Havana, you know. Submarines need fuel. Dictators drift together. Big ones draw in the little ones.’

  ‘Atomic submarines don’t need fuel.’

  ‘Quite right, old man, quite right. But wars always start a little behind the times. Have to be prepared for conventional weapons too. Then there’s economic intelligence – sugar, coffee, tobacco.’

  ‘You can find all that in the Government year-books.’

  ‘We don’t trust them, old man. Then political intelligence. With your cleaners you’ve got the entrée everywhere.’

  ‘Do you expect me to analyse the fluff?’

  ‘It may seem a joke to you, old man, but the main source of the French intelligence at the time of Dreyfus was a charwoman who collected the scraps out of the waste-paper baskets at the German Embassy.’

  ‘I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Hawthorne.’

  ‘But who are you?’

  ‘Well, you might say I’m setting up the Caribbean network. One moment. Someone’s coming. I’ll wash. You slip into a closet. Mustn’t be seen together.’

  ‘We have been seen together.’

  ‘Passing encounter. Fellow-countrymen.’ He thrust Wormold into the compartment as he had thrust him into the lavatory, ‘It’s the drill, you know,’ and then there was silence except for the running tap. Wormold sat down. There was nothing else to do. When he was seated his legs still showed under the half door. A handle turned. Feet crossed the tiled floor towards the pissoir. Water went on running. Wormold felt an enormous bewilderment. He wondered why he had not stopped all this nonsense at the beginning. No wonder Mary had left him. He remembered one of their quarrels. ‘Why don’t you do something, act some way, any way at all? You just stand there …’ At least, he thought, this time I’m not standing, I’m sitting. But in any case what could he have said? He hadn’t been given time to get a word in. Minutes passed. What enormous bladders Cubans had, and how clean Hawthorne’s hands must be getting by this time. The water stopped running. Presumably he was drying his hands, but Wormold remembered there were no towels. That was another problem for Hawthorne but he would be up to it. All part of the drill. At last the feet passed towards the door. The door closed.

  ‘Can I come out?’ Wormold asked. It was like a surrender. He was under orders now.

  He heard Hawthorne tiptoeing near. ‘Give me a few minutes to get away, old man. Do you know who that was? The policeman. A bit suspicious, eh?’

  ‘He may have recognized my legs under the door. Do you think we ought to change trousers?’

  ‘Wouldn’t look natural,’ Hawthorne said, ‘but you are getting the idea. I’m leaving the key of my room in the basin. Fifth floor Seville-Biltmore. Just walk up. Ten tonight. Things to discuss. Money and so on. Sordid issues. Don’t ask for me at the desk.’

  ‘Don’t you need your key?’

  ‘Got a pass key. I’ll be seeing you.’

  Wormold stood up in time to see the door close behind the elegant figure and the appalling slang. The key was there in the wash-basin – Room 501.

  3

  At half-past nine Wormold went to Milly’s room to say good night. Here, where the duenna was in charge, everything was in order – the candle had been lit before the statue of St Seraphina, the honey-coloured missal lay beside the bed, the clothes were eliminated as though they had never existed, and a faint smell of eau-de-Cologne blew about like incense.

  ‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ Milly said. ‘You aren’t still worrying, are you, about Captain Segura?’

  ‘You never pull my leg, do you, Milly?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Everybody else seems to.’

  ‘Did Mother?’

  ‘I suppose so. In the early days.’

  ‘Does Dr Hasselbacher?’

  He remembered the Negro limping slowly by. He said, ‘Perhaps. Sometimes.’

  ‘It’s a sign of affection, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not always. I remember at school –’ He stopped.

  ‘What do you remember, Father?’

  ‘Oh, a lot of things.’

  Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it. But somehow, through no virtue of his own, he had never taken that course. Lack of character perhaps. Schools were said to construct character by chipping off the edges. His edges had been chipped, but the result had not, he thought, been character – only shapelessness, like an exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art.

  ‘Are you happy, Milly?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘At school too?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Nobody pulls your hair now?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And you don’t set anyone on fire?’

  ‘That was when I was thirteen,’ she said with scorn. ‘What’s worrying you, Father?’

  She sat up in bed, wearing a white nylon dressing-gown. He loved her when the duenna was there, and he loved her even more when the duenna was absent: he couldn’t afford the time not to love. It was as if he had come with her a little way on a journey that she would finish alone. The separating years approached them both, like a station down the line, all gain for her and all loss for him. That evening hour was real, but not Hawthorne, mysterious and absurd, not the cruelties of police-stations and governments, the scientists who tested the new H-bomb on Christmas Island, Khrushchev who wrote notes: these seemed less real to him than the inefficient tortures of a school-dormitory. The small boy with the damp towel whom he had just remembered – where was he now? The cruel come and go like cities and thrones and powers, leaving their ruins behind them. They had no permanence. But the clown whom he had seen last year with M
illy at the circus – that clown was permanent, for his act never changed. That was the way to live; the clown was unaffected by the vagaries of public men and the enormous discoveries of the great.

  Wormold began to make faces in the glass.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Father?’

  ‘I wanted to make myself laugh.’

  Milly giggled. ‘I thought you were being sad and serious.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted to laugh. Do you remember the clown last year, Milly?’

  ‘He walked off the end of a ladder and fell in a bucket of whitewash.’

  ‘He falls in it every night at ten o’clock. We should all be clowns, Milly. Don’t ever learn from experience.’

  ‘Reverend Mother says …’

  ‘Don’t pay any attention to her. God doesn’t learn from experience, does He, or how could He hope anything of man? It’s the scientists who add the digits and make the same sum who cause the trouble. Newton discovering gravity – he learned from experience and after that …’

  ‘I thought it was from an apple.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. It was only a matter of time before Lord Rutherford went and split the atom. He had learned from experience too, and so did the men of Hiroshima. If only we had been born clowns, nothing bad would happen to us except a few bruises and a smear of whitewash. Don’t learn from experience, Milly. It ruins our peace and our lives.’

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘I’m trying to waggle my ears. I used to be able to do it. But the trick doesn’t work any longer.’

  ‘Are you still unhappy about Mother?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Are you still in love with her?’

  ‘Perhaps. Now and then.’

  ‘I suppose she was very beautiful when she was young.’

  ‘She can’t be old now. Thirty-six.’

  ‘That’s pretty old.’

  ‘Don’t you remember her at all?’

  ‘Not very well. She was away a lot, wasn’t she?’

  ‘A good deal.’

  ‘Of course I pray for her.’

  ‘What do you pray? That she’ll come back?’

  ‘Oh no, not that. We can do without her. I pray that she’ll be a good Catholic again.’

  ‘I’m not a good Catholic.’

  ‘Oh, that’s different. You are invincibly ignorant.’

  ‘Yes, I expect I am.’

  ‘I’m not insulting you, Father. It’s only theology. You’ll be saved like the good pagans. Socrates, you know, and Cetewayo.’

  ‘Who was Cetewayo?’

  ‘He was king of the Zulus.’

  ‘What else do you pray?’

  ‘Well, of course, lately I’ve been concentrating on the horse.’

  He kissed her good night. She asked, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There are things I’ve got to arrange about the horse.’

  ‘I give you a lot of trouble,’ she said meaninglessly. Then she sighed with content, pulling the sheet up to her neck. ‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it, how you always get what you pray for.’

  CHAPTER 4

  1

  AT EVERY CORNER there were men who called ‘Taxi’ at him as though he were a stranger, and all down the Paseo, at intervals of a few yards the pimps accosted him automatically without any real hope. ‘Can I be of service, sir?’ ‘I know all the pretty girls.’ ‘You desire a beautiful woman.’ ‘Postcards?’ ‘You want to see a dirty movie?’ They had been mere children when he first came to Havana, they had watched his car for a nickel, and though they had aged alongside him they had never got used to him. In their eyes he never became a resident; he remained a permanent tourist, and so they went pegging along – sooner or later, like all the others, they were certain that he would want to see Superman performing at the San Francisco brothel. At least, like the clown, they had the comfort of not learning from experience.

  By the corner of Virdudes Dr Hasselbacher hailed him from the Wonder Bar. ‘Mr Wormold, where are you off to in such a hurry?’

  ‘An appointment.’

  ‘There is always time for a Scotch.’ It was obvious from the way he pronounced Scotch that Dr Hasselbacher had already had time for a great many.

  ‘I’m late as it is.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as late in this city, Mr Wormold. And I have a present for you.’

  Wormold turned in to the bar from the Paseo. He smiled unhappily at one of his own thoughts. ‘Are your sympathies with the East or the West, Hasselbacher?’

  ‘East or West of what? Oh, you mean that. A plague on both.’

  ‘What present have you got for me?’

  ‘I asked one of my patients to bring them from Miami,’ Hasselbacher said. He took from his pocket two miniature bottles of whisky: one was Lord Calvert, the other Old Taylor. ‘Have you got them?’ he asked with anxiety.

  ‘I’ve got the Calvert, but not the Taylor. It was kind of you to remember my collection, Hasselbacher.’ It always seemed strange to Wormold that he continued to exist for others when he was not there.

  ‘How many have you got now?’

  ‘A hundred with the Bourbon and the Irish. Seventy-six Scotch.’

  ‘When are you going to drink them?’

  ‘Perhaps when they reach two hundred.’

  ‘Do you know what I’d do with them if I were you?’ Hasselbacher said. ‘Play checkers. When you take a piece you drink it.’

  ‘That’s quite an idea.’

  ‘A natural handicap,’ Hasselbacher said. ‘That’s the beauty of it. The better player has to drink more. Think of the finesse. Have another Scotch.’

  ‘Perhaps I will.’

  ‘I need your help. I was stung by a wasp this morning.’

  ‘You are the doctor, not me.’

  ‘That’s not the point. One hour later, going out on a sick call beyond the airport, I ran over a chicken.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Mr Wormold, Mr Wormold, your thoughts are far away. Come back to earth. We have to find a lottery-ticket at once, before the draw. Twenty-seven means a wasp. Thirty-seven a chicken.’

  ‘But I have an appointment.’

  ‘Appointments can wait. Drink down that Scotch. We’ve got to hunt for the ticket in the market.’ Wormold followed him to his car. Like Milly, Dr Hasselbacher had faith. He was controlled by numbers as she was by saints.

  All round the market hung the important numbers in blue and red. What were called the ugly numbers lay under the counter; they were left for the small fry and the street sellers to dispose of. They were without importance, they contained no significant figure, no number that represented a nun or a cat, a wasp or a chicken. ‘Look. There’s 2 7 4 8 3,’ Wormold pointed out.

  ‘A wasp is no good without a chicken,’ said Dr Hasselbacher.

  They parked the car and walked. There were no pimps around this market; the lottery was a serious trade uncorrupted by tourists. Once a week the numbers were distributed by a government department, and a politician would be allotted tickets according to the value of his support. He paid $18 a ticket to the department and he resold to the big merchants for $21. Even if his share were a mere twenty tickets he could depend on a profit of sixty dollars a week. A beautiful number containing omens of a popular kind could be sold by the merchants for anything up to thirty dollars. No such profits, of course, were possible for the little man in the street. With only ugly numbers, for which he had paid as much as twenty-three dollars, he really had to work for a living. He would divide a ticket up into a hundred parts at twenty-five cents a part; he would haunt car parks until he found a car with the same number as one of his tickets (no owner could resist a coincidence like that); he would even search for his numbers in the telephone-book and risk a nickel on a call. ‘Senora, I have a lottery-ticket for sale which is the same number as your telephone.’

  Wormold said, ‘Look, there’s a 37 with a 72.’

  ‘Not good enough,’ Dr
Hasselbacher flatly replied.

  Dr Hasselbacher thumbed through the sheets of numbers which were not considered beautiful enough to be displayed. One never knew; beauty was not beauty to all men – there might be some to whom a wasp was insignificant. A police siren came shrieking through the dark round three sides of the market, a car rocked by. A man sat on the kerb with a single number displayed on his shirt like a convict. He said, ‘The Red Vulture.’

  ‘Who’s the Red Vulture?’

  ‘Captain Segura, of course,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘What a sheltered life you lead.’

  ‘Why do they call him that?’

  ‘He specializes in torture and mutilation.’

  ‘Torture?’

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘We’d better try Obispo.’

  ‘Why not wait till the morning?’

  ‘Last day before the draw. Besides, what kind of cold blood runs in your veins, Mr Wormold? When fate gives you a lead like this one – a wasp and a chicken – you have to follow it without delay. One must deserve one’s good fortune.’

  They climbed back into the car and made for Obispo. ‘This Captain Segura’ – Wormold began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  It was eleven o’clock before they found a ticket that satisfied Dr Hasselbacher’s requirements, and then as the shop which displayed it was closed until the morning there was nothing to do but have another drink. ‘Where is your appointment?’

  Wormold said, ‘The Seville-Biltmore.’

  ‘One place is as good as another,’ Dr Hasselbacher said.

  ‘Don’t you think the Wonder Bar …?’

  ‘No, no. A change will be good. When you feel unable to change your bar you have become old.’

  They groped their way through the darkness of the Seville-Biltmore bar. They were only dimly aware of their fellow-guests, who sat crouched in silence and shadow like parachutists gloomily waiting the signal to leap. Only the high proof of Dr Hasselbacher’s spirits could not be quenched.

  ‘You haven’t won yet,’ Wormold whispered, trying to check him, but even a whisper caused a reproachful head to turn towards them in the darkness.

  ‘Tonight I have won,’ Dr Hasselbacher said in a loud firm voice. ‘Tomorrow I may have lost, but nothing can rob me of my victory tonight. A hundred and forty thousand dollars, Mr Wormold. It is a pity that I am too old for women – I could have made a beautiful woman very happy with a necklace of rubies. Now I am at a loss. How shall I spend my money, Mr Wormold? Endow a hospital?’