“Actually, I’m done here,” said Noreen. She looked at the tourist and smiled. And the tourist smiled back and thanked Noreen profusely, as if she’d been given not an inscribed book but a signed check for a thousand dollars.

“So why don’t I just come with you now?” Noreen said, and threaded her arm through mine. She escorted me to the door of the bookshop. “After all, I wouldn’t want you to disappear now that I’ve found you again.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, I can think of any number of reasons,” she said. “Señor Hausner. I am an author, after all.”

We came out of the shop and walked up a gentle slope toward the Floridita Bar.

“I know. I even read one of your books. The one about the Spanish Civil War: The Worst Turns the Best to the Brave.”

“And what did you think?”

“Honestly?”

“You can give it a try, I suppose, Carlos.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“So it’s not just your name that’s false.”

“No, really, I did.”

We were outside the bar. A man jackknifed off the hood of an Oldsmobile and bowed into our path.

“Taxi, señor? Taxi?”

I waved the man away and let Noreen go into the bar first.

“I’ve time for a quick one, and then I have to go. I have an appointment in fifteen minutes. At the cigar factory. It’s business. A job, maybe, so I can’t break it.”

“If that’s the way you want it. After all, it’s only been half a lifetime.”

2

THERE WAS A MAHOGANY BAR the size of a velodrome and, behind it, a dingy-looking mural of an old sailing ship entering the port of Havana. It might have been a slave ship, but another cargo of tourists or American sailors seemed a more likely bet. The Floridita was full of Americans, most of them fresh off the cruise ship parked next to the destroyer in Havana Harbor. Inside the door, a trio of musicians was setting up to play. We found a table, and I quickly ordered some drinks while the waiter could still hear me.

Noreen was busy checking out my shopping. “Montaigne, huh? I’m impressed.” She was speaking German now, probably getting ready to ask me some awkward questions without our being overheard and understood.

“Don’t be. I haven’t read it yet.”

“What’s this? Hobby Center? Do you have children?”

“No, that’s for me.” Seeing her smile, I shrugged. “I like train sets. I like the way they just keep on going around and around, like one single, simple, innocent thought in my head. That way I can ignore all the other thoughts that are in there.”

“I know. You’re like the governess in The Turn of the Screw.”

“Am I?”

“It’s a novel by Henry James.”

“I wouldn’t know. So. Any kids yourself?”

“I have a daughter. Dinah. She’s just finished school.”

The waiter arrived and neatly set out the drinks in front of us like a chess grand master castling a king and a rook. When he was gone, Noreen said, “What’s the story, Carlos? Are you wanted or something?”

“It’s a long story.” We toasted each other silently.

“I’ll bet.”

I glanced at my watch. “Too long to tell now. Another time. What about you? What are you doing in Cuba? Last I heard, you were up before that stupid kangaroo court. The House Committee on Un-American Activities. The HUAC. When was that?”

“May 1952. I was accused of being a communist. And blacklisted by several Hollywood movie studios.” She stirred her drink with a cocktail stick. “That’s why I’m here. A good friend of mine who lives in Cuba read about the HUAC hearings and invited me to come and live in his house for a while.”

“That’s a good friend to have.”

“He’s Ernest Hemingway.”

“Now, that’s a friend I have heard of.”

“As a matter of fact, this is one of his favorite bars.”

“Are you and he…?”

“No. Ernest is married. Anyway, he’s away right now. In Africa. Killing things. Himself mostly.”

“Is he a communist, too?”

“Good grief no. Ernest isn’t political at all. It’s people that interest him. Not ideologies.”

“Wise man.”

“Not so you’d notice.”

The band started to play, and I groaned. It was the kind of band that made you feel seasick as they swayed one way and then the other. One of the men played a witch doctor’s flute, and another tapped a monotonous cowbell that left you feeling sorry for cows. Their sung harmonies were like a freight locomotive’s horn. The girl yelled solos and played guitar. I never yet saw a guitar that I didn’t want to use to drive a nail into a piece of wood. Or into the head of the idiot strumming it.

“Now I really do have to go,” I said.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you like music?”

“Not since I came to Cuba.” I finished my drink and glanced at my watch again. “Look,” I said, “my meeting’s only going to take an hour or so. Why don’t we meet for lunch?”

“I can’t. I have to get back. I have people coming to dinner tonight and there are things I have to get for the cook. I’d love you to come if you could.”

“All right. I will.”

“It’s the Finca Vigía in San Francisco de Paula.” Noreen opened her bag, took out a notepad, and scribbled down an address and telephone number. “Why don’t you come early-say, around five o’clock. Before the rest of my guests arrive. We’ll catch up then.”

“I’d like that.” I took the notepad and wrote out my own address and phone number. “Here,” I said. “Just in case you think I’m going to run out on you.”

“It’s good to see you again, Gunther.”

“You too, Noreen.”

I went to the door and glanced back at the people in the Floridita Bar. No one was listening to the band or even intending to listen. Not while there was drinking to be done. The barman was making daiquiris like they were on special offer, about a dozen at a time. From everything I’d heard and read about Ernest Hemingway, that was the way he liked drinking them, too.

3

I BOUGHT SOME PETIT ROBUSTOS in the cigar factory shop and took them into the smoking room, where a number of men, including Robert Freeman, inhabited an almost infernal world of swirling smoke and igniting matches and glowing tobacco embers. Every time I went into that room, the smell reminded me of the library at the Adlon Hotel, and for a moment I could almost see poor Louis Adlon standing in front of me with a favorite Upmann in his white gloved fingers.

Freeman was a large, bluff man who looked more South American than British. He spoke good Spanish for an Englishman-about as good as my own-which perhaps was hardly surprising given his family history: his great-grandfather, James Freeman, had started selling Cuban cigars as long ago as 1839. He listened politely to the details of my proposal and then told me of his own plans to expand the family business:

“Until recently I owned a cigar factory in Jamaica. But, like the Jamaicans themselves, the product is inconsistent, so I’ve sold that and decided to concentrate on selling Cuban cigars in Britain. I have plans to buy a couple of other companies that will give me about twenty percent of the British market. But the German market. I don’t know. Is there such a thing? You tell me, old boy.”

I told him about Germany’s membership in the European Coal and Steel Community and how the country, benefiting from the currency reform of 1948, had seen the fastest growth of any nation in European history. I told him how industrial production had increased by thirty-five percent and how agricultural production had already surpassed prewar levels. It’s amazing these days how much real information you can get from a German newspaper.

“The question is not,” I said, “can you afford to try to gain a share of the West German market, but can you afford not to try.”