Our Man In Havana Read Online Free Page B

atomic age, Mr Wormold. Push a button – piff bang – where are we? Another Scotch, please.’
    ‘And that’s another thing. You know what the firm has done now? They’ve sent me an Atomic Pile Cleaner.’
    ‘Really? I didn’t know science had got that far.’
    ‘Oh, of course, there’s nothing atomic about it – it’s only a name. Last year there was the Turbo Jet; this year it’s the Atomic. It works off the light-plug just the same as the other.’
    ‘Then why worry?’ Dr Hasselbacher repeated like a theme tune, leaning into his whisky.
    ‘They don’t realize that sort of name may go down in the States, but not here, where the clergy are preaching all the time against the misuse of science. Milly and I went to the Cathedral last Sunday – you know how she is about Mass, thinks she’ll convert me, I wouldn’t wonder. Well, Father Mendez spent half an hour describing the effect of a hydrogen bomb. Those who believe in heaven on earth, he said, are creating a hell – he made it sound that way too – it was very lucid. How do you think I liked it on Monday morning when I had to make a window display of the new Atomic Pile Suction Cleaner? It wouldn’t have surprised me if one of the wild boys around here had broken the window. Catholic Action, Christ the King, all that stuff. I don’t know what to do about it, Hasselbacher.’
    ‘Sell one to Father Mendez for the Bishop’s palace.’
    ‘But he’s satisfied with the Turbo. It was a good machine. Of course this one is too. Improved suction for bookcases. You know I wouldn’t sell anyone a machine that wasn’t good.’
    ‘I know, Mr Wormold. Can’t you just change the name?’
    ‘They won’t let me. They are proud of it. They think it’s the best phrase anyone has thought up since “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.” You know they had something called a purifying pad with the Turbo. Nobody minded – it was a good gadget, but yesterday a woman came in and looked at the Atomic Pile and she asked whether a pad that size could really absorb all the radio-activity. And what about Strontium 90? she asked.’
    ‘I could give you a medical certificate,’ said Dr Hasselbacher.
    ‘Do you never worry about anything?’
    ‘I have a secret defence, Mr Wormold. I am interested in life.’
    ‘So am I, but …’
    ‘You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us – I’m sorry; I wasn’t referring to your wife. But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of the cheese. You don’t do crosswords, do you, Mr Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerned with the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion – although of course one dreams that perhaps a time might come … One day I must show you my laboratory.’
    ‘I must be going, Hasselbacher.’
    ‘You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.’
    2
    When Wormold arrived at his store in Lamparilla Street, Milly had not yet returned from her American convent school, and in spite of the two figures he could see through the door, the shop seemed to him empty. How empty! And so it would remain until Milly came back. He was aware whenever he entered the shop of a vacuum that had nothing to do with his cleaners. No customer could fill it, particularly not the one who stood there now looking too spruce for Havana and reading a leaflet in English on the Atomic Pile, pointedly neglecting Wormold’s assistant. Lopez was an impatient man who did not like to waste his time away from the Spanish edition of
Confidential
. He was glaring at the stranger and making no attempt to win him over.
    ‘
Buenos dias
,’ Wormold said. He looked at all strangers in the shop with an habitual suspicion. Ten years ago a man had entered the shop, posing as a customer, and he had guilelessly sold him a