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flowers entangled the small clump of leaves, thorns and branches which seemed capable of surviving any local or universal cataclysm. The sylvan shadow in the garden, dominated by the arrogant plumes of several palms, lent a dark patina to the house rising up a few yards behind, exhibiting its number 7, on calle Milagros, between Delicias and Buenaventura. Could that number and the names of the three streets – Miracles, Delights and Good Fortune – be an invention of Alberto Marqués in order to locate his house in a corner of Earthly Paradise, in perfect arcadian bliss? Yes, it had to be one of the devil’s infinite stratagems, since, according to the information the Count had recorded in his notebook, extracted from the aged but ever healthy file he’d been handed with a broad grin by the security specialist who dealt with the Ministry of Culture, anything was possible if it involved that very particular, diabolical Alberto Marqués: a hugely experienced, predatory homosexual, politically apathetic and ideologically deviant, a provocative, conflictive individual, lover of the foreign, hermetic, obscurantist, potential consumer of marijuana and other substances, protector of derailed queers, a man of dubious philosophical affiliations, steeped in class-based, petty-bourgeois prejudice, all annotated and classified with the precious help of a Muscovite manual of social-realist techniques and procedures . . . That impressive curriculum vitae
was the result of reports written, collated and précised by diverse police informers, successive presidents of the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution, cadres of the long-gone National Council for Culture and the present Ministry of Culture, the political attaché’s office in the Cuban Embassy in Paris and even by a Franciscan Father who’d been his confessor in a prehistoric era and a pair of perverse lovers who’d been interrogated for strictly criminal reasons. What the hell have I got myself into? Trying futilely to cleanse his mind of prejudices – the fact is I love prejudice and can’t stand pansies – the Count crossed the garden and walked up the four steps to the front door in order to press the bell that stuck out like a nipple under the number 7. He stroked it twice and repeated the operation, for no sound of a bell reached him, and when he was about to touch it again, hesitating over whether to try the knocker, he felt assailed by the darkness beyond the slowly opening door, which surrounded the pale face of Alberto Marqués, dramatist and theatre director.
    â€œWhat’s the charge this time?” asked the man, his deep voice heavy with irony. The Count tried to suppress his surprise at the door, which apparently opened by itself, at the remarkable pallor of his host’s face and the question he fired at him, and opted to smile.
    â€œI’m looking for Alberto Marqués.”
    â€œYours truly, Mr Policeman,” the man replied, opening the door a few inches more, with a distinctly theatrical touch, so that the Count had the forbidden pleasure of seeing him full length: colourless rather than pale, thin to the point of emaciation, his head barely adorned by a drooping, lank lock. He was covered from neck to ankles by a Chinese dressing
gown that might have belonged to the Han dynasty: yes, thought the policeman, no less than two thousand years of anguish must have passed through that silk, its colours as faded as the man’s face, worn and rough as if it were no longer silk, prominently marked by testimonies to many a battle, by what could be coffee, banana, iodine or even blood stains, endowing what masqueraded as the attire of historic emperors with a dismal, out-of-sorts leitmotif . . . The Count forced a smile, remembered the awful reports stuck to his buttock, and dared ask: “How do you know I’m police? Were you expecting us?”
    Alberto Marqués blinked several times and tried