The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  She was a schoolteacher and, at twenty-six, three years older than the Mambo King. No one in her family held out much hope that she would get married, but that night the way Cesar kept looking at her became a subject of family gossip. Julián could not have been more delighted. He would call them together and speak to them jointly. “I wanted to show you both the view from this window. Isn’t that something there, the sun’s rays spreading everywhere. ¿Qué bueno, eh?”

  Who knew what she felt? She had the downcast look of a woman who was in the habit of taking nervous sidelong glances into mirrors, a woman who was used to taking care of herself. But Cesar? Sitting at that happy table in the company of the first man who had ever really looked out for him, he felt that he wanted to be a part of that family. So he began the most dogged courtship. She’d seen the way he had looked at her cousin Vivian, his eyes looping around the curvaceousness of her rear end, and she had told herself, “No, no, no, no matter what he says to me.” But she gave in to Cesar and started to take walks with him along the streets of Santiago. Always gentlemanly, he held doors open for her, and never cursed in his conversation. Around her, he would make flamboyant gestures with his hands and always dressed neatly, usually in a white linen jacket and clean trousers, and his cane hat, the brim pinched in, pulled low over his brow.

  They had their picture taken in front of a movie poster advertising the Betty Grable film Moon Over Miami.

  Sometimes he’d get her alone, the two of them sitting in a little deserted park among the flowers. Her iron resistance amused the Mambo King. She’d allow him a few kisses and embraces and one evening he unbuttoned the four left-sided pearly buttons of her blouse and got his hands inside, touching her tender breasts, but she never let him go any further, and he’d laugh out, telling her, “Don’t you know, it’ll happen sooner or later—even if I have to marry you!” There was something funny about this man who’d bedded down many women being foiled by this girl who used to blow air into his mouth and who’d lock her legs tight whenever his long musician’s fingers prowled under her skirt, searching out her most precious “treasure.” How this courtship turned into marriage, no one would be able to explain.

  For a time he trusted Luisa in a way he had never trusted anyone. She was an unlikely partner for the Mambo King, especially when put next to the cheap floozies he usually preferred, but Cesar, who had been seeking peace since the days of his childhood, wanted to marry her.

  Privately, in her company, shut away from the rest of the world, he was content. But as soon as he stepped out into the street he became a different man. When other women walked by, he would look, his penis would get stiff in his trousers, and Luisa would know it. Quickening her pace, she would march off and leave him behind. His macho temperament never knew how to deal with this, and it would be days before loneliness and his affection for the family brought them back together again.

  When he asked her to marry him, Luisa had her doubts, but fearing old-maidhood, and because Julián had sworn by Cesar, she said yes. This was in 1943 and they went to live in a small apartment in Santiago (another beautiful memory: their little home on a cobblestone street, sunny from morning until night and busy with merchants and children). When he brought her home to the family in Las Piñas, his mother, María, liked her very much, and so did Nestor: everyone, including the irascible Pedro, treated her civilly.

  What happened? He did as he pleased. It took about a year for the elation of joining García’s family to wear off. The Mambo King found himself sitting at these meals in García’s house, daydreaming about some of the women he had seen on the streets. He even behaved in an annoyed fashion at García’s, because García had placed at his feet a woman who seemed to weep if you offended her! Because she knew well her uncle’s schedule in advance, it became difficult for Cesar to disappear for two or three days at a time, and this bothered him. So he developed the excuse of returning home to Las Piñas, where he would hole up with some country girl, resentful and angry over his situation. He would return from these sojourns maintaining a silence for a week at a time. He would walk through rooms muttering phrases like “Why have I allowed myself to become a captive,” and “What am I doing with my youth,” in clear earshot of Luisa. For a long time she did what she could to make him feel better . . . She would beg him to come around, and he would leave the house, her question “Why are you so cruel to me?” circling his head like a summer mosquito.

  One day in 1944, Luisa happily told Cesar that she was pregnant, as if the birth of a child later that year would shore up their crumbling marriage. They would turn up at Julián’s house for weekly meals, and as a family they seemed content. But then one night Julián, who was not made of sawdust and had heard about and seen the way this crooner was treating his niece, called Cesar out onto his balcony and as he looked into the distance over Santiago Bay said, “I feel very close to you, my boy, but no matter what, I expect you to treat my family with respect. And I’ll tell you now, if you don’t like what I’m saying, señor, you can walk out the door.”

  His sternness depressed Cesar. The man had been sick for a time with poor breathing and edema of the limbs and he was no longer playing much piano with the orchestra and preferred to conduct, halfheartedly waving a baton, from a chair. The man could hardly walk across a room (as the Mambo King could not now). It was as if Julián’s huge weight had crushed his lungs, his breathing was labored and he had trouble moving. And so the future Mambo King blamed Julián’s ill health for his temper.

  “What you hear isn’t true, Julián. I love Luisa with all my heart, I would never want things to go badly for her.”

  Julián rapped him on the shoulder and hugged him in his friendly way and his anger seemed to subside. This brush with him turned the Mambo King into a better husband for a time and he and Luisa passed through a period of happiness that revolved around a picture of future domestic bliss, with Cesar as dutiful bandleader-crooner-husband, and his wife and child(ren) waiting happily and lovingly at home for him. Yet, when he conceived of this tranquil scene, he saw himself pushing open the door of that house with a hard kick, the way his Papi used to; he saw himself shouting and angry and slapping his child’s face as he had been slapped, saw himself pacing in circles and cursing everyone around him, as did his father. He had thought that marrying into Julián’s family would inspire a mundane, normal happiness in him, but now he found himself regretting the whole business again. Not because he didn’t love Luisa, but because he felt that abuse and discontent boiled in his blood and he did not want to hurt her . . .

  And the pregnancy which made the act of love a too-delicate operation also troubled him. (Here he remembers the first time he made love to her. Her skin was white and her hips bony and her triangle of pubic hair wet at its center because of all their kisses. He was not a heavy man then, but he was twice as thick as she and he undid her virginity in one spurting thrust which led, through the succession of days, to many other thrusts: they did it so much her hipbones and buttocks were covered with black-and-blue marks and his thing, which never failed to rise, finally fainted dead away at three o’clock one Sunday afternoon, due to heat and exhaustion. But when he was in love with her, he loved the Luisa who was the key to her Uncle Julián García, the thin, pensive Luisa who was there for his pleasure and who never expected anything from him.) He found himself restless, spending many nights with the whores of those small towns. Luisa knew, she could smell these women on his skin, in his hair, she could tell by the sated sleepiness and the blueness that ringed his eyes.

  “Why are you so cruel to me?” she’d ask him again and again.

  (And this cruelty, I didn’t want things to be that way, I was just being a man and doing as I saw fit, Luisa, but you didn’t know, didn’t know my restlessness and my disbelief in such simple things as a tranquil married life, you couldn’t see how it all struck me as a final trick, that enslavement and humiliation perhaps awaited me. The situation was already turning your Uncle Julián away
from me, he’d used to look at me with pure love. So I was led around by my penis, so what? What did a few laughs, a few fucks with women I’d never see again, have to do with anything, especially our love? Why did you have to take it so badly? Why did you have to weep and then shout at me?)

  That was when he really started to drink. One night he drank enough rum at Julián’s to feel as if he were floating down a river. When he stumbled out of the house, two of his fellow musicians were sent out to help him down the stairs. Of course, he pushed them away, repeating, “I don’t need anybody,” and slipped down two flights, conking his head.

  He woke to an idea: going to Havana.

  Away, away, away from all this was how Cesar saw it. He had many reasons for moving to Havana: that was the place to be in Cuba if you were a musician. But he also believed that he could resolve things with Luisa in Havana, and at the same time, away from her family, he could do as he pleased. Besides, he was twenty-seven years old and wanted to work in an orchestra where he might perform some original songs. He and Nestor had been writing boleros and ballads for a long time and had never performed them with Julián García. In Havana, they might be able to put something together. What else could he do, remain with Julián and play the same dance halls for the rest of his life?

  In any case, things with Julián’s orchestra had changed. Julián was so ill that he spent most of his days in bed. One of his sons, Rudolfo, took over as orchestra leader and wanted to teach Cesar a lesson in humility for treating his cousin so badly, relegating him to the trumpet section, alongside his brother Nestor, who had recently joined the band. This lesson just intensified his resolve to leave the orchestra, and in 1945 he took his wife and baby to Havana.

  They had been in Havana for two months, living in a solar in the inexpensive section of La Marina, when word came that García had died. With Julián gone, the Mambo King felt like a prince who had abruptly come out from under a spell. By the time they returned with their baby from Oriente after the funeral, he had no stomach left for the matrimonial bond. (Now you must see him at a party in Manhattan circa 1949 with his right hand slung across his heart, the other held up high as if doing the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, sweat pouring off his forehead, hips shaking, a drink in hand, happy, happy.)

  Though they lived in a cheerful and noisy solar, their cramped two-room apartment was a somber place. He’d gotten work for a time as a pit musician in a big movie house, backing up the singers and comedians who would entertain the audiences between films; loaded crates in the market; and then, through a new acquaintance, got himself—and his brother Nestor, who had come out to join him—jobs as busboy and waiter over at the Havana chapter of the Explorers’ Club. With people on the streets, and friends in the cafés and bars and dance halls, he was a cheerful man, but when it came to his wife he’d spend hours without saying a word to her, and when she crossed a room, he didn’t notice. She had become this invisibility who sometimes shared his bed and who’d carry his daughter in her arms across the room, to sit in a square of sunlight.

  In those months he completely gave in to a family affliction: every other woman walking the streets of Havana seemed infinitely, painfully more beautiful and desirable than his own wife. He’d come home at night, get dressed up, and head out to the dance halls, a dandy in a black-brimmed cane hat. He pretended not to hear her calling out, “Please, why don’t you stay home with me?” Pretended not to hear her “Please don’t go.”

  He found himself whistling at the girls walking on the promenade of the Prado; he was the slick macho with hat tilted low over his brow, out on the sidewalk in front of the El Dandy clothing shore, giving the up-and-down to women; he was the crooning guitarist, eyebrows cocked high, serenading the pretty tourists on their way into the Hotel Nacional, the T-shirted man in plaid bathing trunks, skulking along the balconies of the hotel and heading clandestinely for a stairway the fuck out of there, the fellow writhing on a sun-baked bed on a Tuesday afternoon in a room facing the sea.

  After a while, he simply pretended that he had never been married: he kept his thin wedding band tucked away in a cane suitcase among the sheets of paper on which he’d written down his ideas for songs with names like “Ingratitude,” “Deceitful Heart,” “A Tropical Romance.” Occasionally he grew nostalgic for that time of happiness when he had gotten close to Julián and his family, when he had fallen in love with Luisa, and then he would settle down again and they would be happy for weeks. But things went in cycles with him. The baby made it really difficult. He would storm around saying, “If it wasn’t for the kid, I’d be a free man.” He horrified his wife, who kept trying to make him happy. This went on for six months, then he finally pushed her too far.

  He was in a fruit market down the street from where he lived, a market crowded with wagons and stands, ice sellers and coffee vendors, fish and poultry sellers, wandering among the tubers and thick plantains, when he noticed a woman, no prettier than most women, but exuding, in his opinion, a rampant sensuality. She wore a wedding ring. She looked bored. Perhaps her husband no longer made love to her at night, or perhaps he was an effeminate man who could hardly get it up, or perhaps he liked to abuse her at night, squeezing her breasts until they turned black and blue. Circling around the arcade, Cesar followed this woman, who avoided him coyly, as if they were playing a game, disappearing among the columns.

  He would turn up at her solar in the afternoons when her husband was working. He couldn’t remember her name, but in the Hotel Splendour the Mambo King remembered how she would get all violent during the act of love and had the bad habit of yanking hard on his quivering testicles at the moment of his climax, so hard he would have pain for days. The sordidness of all this turned his stomach years later, but back then he took this woman for granted, in the same way that he took his wife and all women for granted. One day it caught up with him. When he’d gotten tired of this woman and moved on, she turned up at the solar one afternoon and told Luisa about her affair with Cesar. (And did she describe the tattoo of an angel over the nipple on the right side of his chest, did she describe the burn scar on his right arm, the birthmark in the shape of a horn on his back, or his thing that used to creep up a hand’s width above his belly button?) By the time he came home that night, Luisa had left the apartment.

  He found a letter saying that his abuse had driven her away. The family was waiting for her, she would manage better by herself with his child than with a man who did not appreciate the truly good things in his life, who spent his life chasing after tramps.

  Hearing the word “cruel, cruel, cruel” in his sleep, he had a dream in which he was walking up that hill and meeting Julián García again for the first time. Then he started all over again with Luisa and for a time his pain and sorrow went away. He wrote her a letter begging her forgiveness, and she wrote back saying that she might forgive him if he returned to Oriente to talk things over with her. He felt relieved that she still cared for him but in the end declared in his macho manner, “No woman runs my life.” He believed that since she had left him, it was her duty to return. He spent a few months waiting, thinking that the door to the solar would open and that she would walk in. It never happened. He couldn’t understand her problems with him. Couldn’t she see that he was handsome and she was plain? Couldn’t she see that he was still a young man and wanted to have his way with other women? And how did she have the right to deprive his baby of her father? Hadn’t she watched him with Mariela? Seen how the baby cooed and fell happily asleep in his arms . . . Hadn’t he told her about the rough circumstances of his upbringing?

  (You didn’t believe me, that for me as a kid it was a slap in the face and a kick in the fondillo in the name of my father, who did as he pleased and shoved it up my ass.)

  At first he spent many a night missing her, a humiliating pain gnawed inside him, a pain that said life was sad. If only she had known what it was to be a handsome caballero with a nice singing voice and a bestial thing between his legs and yo
uth burning in his veins, wouldn’t she have known better?

  “If she turns up at my door, then we’ll see.”

  But living in Havana without her got him into a really bad way—many a night found him charging madly and drunkenly down the streets of La Marina.

  “My little daughter, my precious little daughter, Mariela.”

  Sip of whiskey.

  “Mariela . . .”

  Then he softened and backed down from his stubborn stance, given the distance of time and nostalgia. He had speeches all prepared. He would go back to Oriente and sweet-talk her. “I have no excuses . . . I don’t know what it is. I’ve always been alone. You know my father, he was un bruto with my mother, I never learned any other way.”

  He decided to return to Oriente to reclaim his daughter, and showed up at the house of Luisa’s parents, where she had been staying, pounding the door with a shoe and demanding that he be shown the proper respect.

  “Only if you behave in a civil manner,” he was told.

  He expected to find her in bad shape, pale and gaunt. But she seemed happier, and that bothered him, made him angry. “She couldn’t have loved me very much” is what he came to think. They sat facing each other in the parlor of the house, the family skulking in nearby rooms. The formality of the situation startled him. They spoke like old, passing acquaintances rather than a husband and wife of nearly three years. He had searched his mind for the right words that would break her down, force her to accept his actions. He refused to admit to any wrongdoing, refused to concede that he had treated her badly. He said that his letters had already confessed to his sins. Why should he be humiliated again? Despite the fact that he was the budding composer of beautiful romantic boleros that exposed the sweetest sentiments, he felt at a loss for the proper words. It was the one time in his life, he would tell himself years later, when he had truly lost his composure and suffered dearly for it. After demanding that she return to him, he had been told by his wife, Luisa, in a calm and delicately toned voice, “Only if you behave like a decent gentleman, then I’ll accompany you.”