The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Just as he was saying that, the plane hit an air pocket, dropped several hundred feet, and started shaking.

  And, like the airplane, Nestor kept shaking. Not that he was a complete wreck: playing the trumpet and singing always had a calming effect on him and he had learned to calm himself in front of his children, Leticia and Eugenio.

  “Whatever you do,” Cesar said one day, “be a man around your own children. You don’t want them growing up fucked up.”

  Desilu Productions put them up in the Garden of Allah Hotel, with a swimming pool, prickly palm trees, and young starlets stretching out in the sun. Each time they would head out from the hotel for rehearsals, Nestor would belt down a glass of whiskey, sometimes two. He had gotten that way, playing in the big dance halls. The television studio was over on Selma Avenue and was so busy that no one noticed when Nestor would show up a little drunk. The actual filming of the program was to take place on a Friday and the players and musicians would have three days to rehearse. Everyone involved with the show was nice to the brothers. Desi Arnaz was especially kind and generous to the Cubans he’d hired. Ask anyone about Arnaz in those days and they’d talk about his friendliness and concern for the people working for him, like a responsible patrón. After all, the man was Cuban and knew how to present the proper image of a man.

  They’d arrive for rehearsals at ten and spend most of the day hanging around with the musicians and watching the orchestra set up: many of its members were American musicians who’d been playing around in California big bands, but there were a few Cubans with whom the brothers killed time playing whist.

  They didn’t have much to do on the show. A walk-on scene and then the song. As for their acting abilities, Arnaz, who kept an active hand in everything, would tell the brothers just to be themselves—and always with a slap to their backs. But Nestor was always taking out those few pages of script with their few lines of dialogue and reading them over and over again. (A portion of this script, yellowed with age and torn, would be found among the Mambo King’s effects in the room in the Hotel Splendour.) Even when Arnaz had told them, “Don’t worry, even if you flub your dialogue, we’ll take care of it. Pero no te preocupes, okay?”

  All the same, Nestor seemed so worried. He was a funny man, at times collected and reasonable about things, at other times lost and distraught.

  The evening they actually filmed the show before an audience, Nestor could barely move, he wanted out so badly. He spent the afternoon pacing back and forth in their hotel room, a sweaty nervous mess. And at the studio itself he remained in the wings, leaning up against a Coke machine, watching the bustle of electricians, sound and light technicians, cameramen, and script girls all around him, as if life were passing him by. Something about singing that song, María’s song, before millions, frightened him. His fear frustrated Cesar, who kept saying, “Tranquilo, tranquilo, hombre. And just don’t forget, we’ll have Arnaz out there with us.”

  Nestor must have looked really badly off because one of Arnaz’s musicians, a nice plump baldheaded fellow from Cienfuegos who played the congas and bongos for Arnaz, went up to him and asked, “Are you all right, my friend?” Then he pulled Nestor off to the side and gave him a few swigs of rum from a small bottle that he had in his pocket. That did calm him down, and in a short time a makeup lady came over and brushed their foreheads and noses with powder. Another assistant sat tuning Cesar’s guitar to a piano. A third assistant led them over to the spot from which they would enter the stage. Then Arnaz himself stepped out of his dressing room, smiled, and waved to the brothers. Then, as he always did with his younger brother before any performance, Cesar looked him over, brushed the lint off his jacket, pulled down on its hem to make sure his shoulders were straight, and patted Nestor’s back. With that the orchestra started to play the I Love Lucy theme and someone gave them their cue, and together, guitar and trumpet in hand, they went on.

  It was 1955 and Lucille Ball was cleaning in her living room when she heard a knock on the door to her Manhattan apartment, someone gently rapping.

  “I’m commmmmming,” she answered, touching her hairdo on her way to the door.

  Standing there, two men in white silk suits and butterfly-shaped lace bow ties, black instrument cases, guitar and trumpet, by their sides, with black-brimmed cane hats in hand which they’d taken off as she opened the door. The two men nodded and smiled, but there seemed something sad about their expressions, at least in retrospect, as if they knew what would happen to them. The taller and broader of the two, who wore a slick, pimpy-looking mustache, in vogue at the time, cleared his throat and said in a quiet voice, “Mrs. Ricardo? My name is Alfonso and this is my brother Manny . . .”

  “Oh, yes, the fellows from Cuba. Ricky told me all about you. Come on in and make yourselves at home. Ricky’ll be out in a minute.”

  With tremendous politeness the brothers bowed and then sat down on the sofa, each leaning forward, not allowing himself to sink completely into its plump cushions. The younger brother, Manny, seemed the more nervous of the two, his foot tapping the floor; his darkened, somewhat tired eyes looking out into the world with innocence and apprehension. Behind them was a spinet piano on which stood a squat bowl of flowers and a porcelain figurine of a picador; then, a lace-draped window before them, a table on which the redheaded Lucille Ball soon placed a tray of cookies and coffee. All this happened in a few seconds, it was as if she had known just when they would be coming to visit. But that didn’t matter—the older brother dropped a few sugar cubes into his coffee, stirred it, and nodded thanks to their hostess.

  Suddenly in walked Ricky Ricardo, nightclub singer and musical impresario—the character whom Desi Arnaz played on his television show. He was a pleasant-looking man with large friendly eyes and a thick head of black hair, shiny as sealskin. Dressed in cuffed trousers, wide-lapeled sports jacket, short-collared shirt, and a slick-looking black tie decorated with piano keys and a crocodile-shaped tie clip, he definitely seemed prosperous and self-confident. He walked in with his right hand in his jacket pocket and, when he saw the brothers, rapped each on his back and said, “Manny, Alfonso! Gee, I’m glad to see you! How are things down in Cuba?”

  “Fine, Ricky.”

  “Well, sit down and tell me, did you fellows decide which song you’re going to do on my show at the Tropicana?”

  “Yes,” said the older brother. “We’ve decided to sing ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’ ”

  “That’s swell, fellows. Say, Lucy, wait until you hear the number they’re going to do with me for the finale on the show next week. ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’ ”

  The redhead’s expression changed, fell to pieces, as if someone had died.

  “But, Ricky, you promised me the chance to sing on the show!”

  “Well, I can’t discuss it with you now, Lucy. I’ve got to take the fellows over to the club.”

  “Please, Ricky, if you let me, I’ll never never never ask you again. Please?”

  She stood in front of him and looked at him so sweetly and fluttered her eyelashes so endearingly that he began to reconsider. “We’ll see, Lucy.”

  And shaking his head, he started speaking rapidly in Spanish to the brothers: “Si ustedes supieran las cosas que tengo que aguantarme todos los días! Dios mío! Me vuelvo loco con estas americanas! Mi mamá me lo dijo, me dijo, ‘Ricky, no te cases con una americana, a no ser que quieras un big headache! Esas americanas te pueden volver loco.’ Mi mamá tenía razón, debía haberme casado con esa chica bonita de Cuba que nunca me puso problemas, que sabía quién le endulzaba el pan. Ella no era crazy, ella me dejaba tranquilo, ¿saben ustedes lo que quiero decir, compañeros?”*

  And in English again, “Let’s go.”

  The brothers put their hats on, took up their instrument cases, and followed the nightclub singer out. When he opened the door, his neighbors, a stout-looking bald man and his wife, a pretty, somewhat matronly blonde, stood before him, flattop straw hats in hand. The two broth
ers nodded to them and made their way out into the apartment-building hallway and left for the club.

  Later, an immense satin heart dissolved and through a haze appeared the interior of the Tropicana nightclub. Facing a dance floor and stage, about twenty tables set with linen and candles at which sat ordinary but elegantly dressed people—your nightclub clientele of the day. Pleated curtains hanging down from the ceiling, potted palms here and there. A tuxedoed maître d’ with an oversize black wine list in hand, a long-legged cigarette girl, and waiters going from table to table. Then the dance floor itself, and finally the stage, its apron and wings painted to resemble African drums, with birds and squiggly voodoo lines, these patterns repeated on the conga drums and on the music stands, behind which sat the members of the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra, twenty or so musicians seated in four tiered rows, each man decked out in a frilly-sleeved mambo shirt and vest decorated with sequined palms (with the exception of a female harpist in long-skirted dress and wearing rhinestone glasses), the musicians looking very human, very ordinary, wistful, indifferent, happy, poised, and ready with their instruments.

  At center stage, a large ball microphone, spotlight, drumroll, and Ricky Ricardo.

  “Well, folks, tonight I have a special treat for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present to you, direct from Havana, Cuba, Manny and Alfonso Reyes singing a bolero of their own composition, ‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’ ”

  The brothers walked out in white suits and with a guitar and trumpet, bowed to the audience, and nodded when Ricky Ricardo faced the orchestra and, holding his conductor’s wand, prepared to begin, asked them, “Are you ready?”

  The older brother strummed an A-minor chord, the key of the song; a harp swirled in as if from the clouds of heaven; then the bassist began to play a habanera, and then the piano and horns played a four-chord vamp. Standing side by side before the microphone, brows creased in concentration, expressions sincere, the brothers began to sing that romantic bolero “Beautiful María of My Soul.” A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you.

  As Cesar sang, his vocal cords trembling, he seemed to be watching something profoundly beautiful and painful happening in the distance, eyes passionate, imploring, his earnest expression asking, “Can you see who I am?” But the younger brother’s eyes were closed and his head was tilted back. He looked like a man on the verge of falling through an eternal abyss of longing and solitude.

  For the final verses they were joined by the bandleader, who harmonized with them and was so happy with the song that at the end he whipped his right hand up into the air, a lock of thick black hair falling over his brow. Then he shouted, “Olé!” The brothers were now both smiling and taking bows, and Arnaz, playing Ricky Ricardo, said, “Let’s give them a nice hand, folks!” The brothers bowed again and shook Arnaz’s hand and walked offstage, waving to the audience.

  Nestor tried, heaven help him. Every day he read that book on self-improvement by Mr. D. D. Vanderbilt, which he’d study carefully with an English dictionary on hand. That was Nestor in that California hotel at three in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed in boxer shorts and robe, trying hard to overcome his own skepticism about the victory of a positive attitude and of self-application over despair and defeat. After six years in the United States, he was still living with a growing dread of things. It wasn’t that he feared one thing in particular; he just had the sense that things weren’t going to work out, that the sky would fall in and lightning would strike him as he walked down the street, that the earth might open up and swallow him. He didn’t sit around dwelling on these thoughts, he dreamed them. He had been on the same plateau of dreams for years, the same dreams that had afflicted him in childhood in Cuba, when he used to wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat in a room swarming with crows or when he found himself entangled in burning coils of rope, when the rope mysteriously crept into his body through his ears and feasted on his insides, when he would wake up in the middle of the night and find the priest standing over him with his funeral cassock and a grim face like melted wax, his vestments and hands smelling oddly of frijoles negros and church incense.

  Lately, he’d started dreaming again about crawling on his hands and knees along a narrow tunnel just barely wide enough for him to fit through; the tunnel seemed to go on forever into the distance toward a faint glow of light. And as he crawled through, his shoulders and knees wedged tight, he could hear voices speaking softly, just loud enough to hear but not to understand.

  He had been dreaming this and awakened as the California sun burst though an opening in the Venetian blinds, its brilliant light pouring into the room. He felt his stomach muscles flutter, a shock went through his body, and he opened his eyes. It was around noon, and the first thing he heard was his thirty-seven-year-old brother Cesar frolicking in the pool outside with his new acquaintances, three girls barely out of adolescence in scanty one-piece bathing suits, giggly and absolutely delighted that Cesar Castillo, playing the sport, kept buying them high frost-glazed drinks of fruit juice, rum, spoonfuls of sugar, orange, and crushed ice, compliments of Desilu Productions.

  This was their last day in California and Cesar was having the time of his life. There he was, wearing a little tarnished crucifix on a chain around his neck, thick curling chest hair damp and streaked with gray, a long Havana cigar in his mouth, head tilted back—not in pain, but in joy—soaking up the sun, sipping his drink, and flirting with the girls. They had rushed over to him because, at first, as he strutted around the pool in his oversized plaid trunks, they had mistaken him for the movie actor Gilbert Roland. The girls were thrilled to meet him anyway, thrilled that the handsome Cesar Castillo had promised them dinner that night at some fancy joint.

  “Señoritas,” he had said, “you name it and it’s yours!”

  Through the Venetian blinds, Nestor watched Cesar paddling over to the side of the pool with big splashes—he did not know how to swim. Nature was calling, and he came back into their Garden of Allah bungalow, his urine powerful and noisy in the toilet.

  “It’s beautiful here, huh? Too bad we have to go back so soon.”

  The toilet flushed and he added, “Brother, why don’t you come out and join us?”

  “Yes, in a few moments.”

  A curvaceous female shadow appeared in the frosted glass of the bungalow door and called in, “Yoo-hoo!” And when Cesar opened the door, she asked, “May I use your little girls’ room?”

  “Of course.”

  Wearing a red bathing suit with a short pleated skirt and red high heels, the blonde, all of her, rump, breasts, long legs, bounced daintily across the room. As she slipped into the bathroom, Cesar approximated the width of her hips with his hands and sucked in air through his teeth. The blonde must have felt a little self-conscious about urinating in their bathroom, for she turned on a faucet, and Cesar took this as a hint and opened the bungalow door and waited, his slightly drunken frame wedged up against the doorway, stomach in, chest out, watching the pool and the palm trees in the distance, the shrubbery behind them spilling over with flowers—joking with Nestor, he once called them “the pubic hair of nature.” Happy in his thoughts, he whistled.

  In a moment, Cesar and the blonde were back by the pool, jumping in and splashing water on the others. She was a good swimmer and gracefully plumed down to the deep end of the pool, gushing to the surface again, her body firm and tanned . . . Nestor supposed that he should go out, have a few drinks, and relax, but he told himself, “I’m a married man with two children.” But he kept hearing Cesar, relaxed and laughing. When he looked out, Cesar was kneeling by the three girls; they were lying face down on mats in a row: he was rubbing suntan lotion on their backs and the meatiest, sweat-beaded parts of their thighs.

&nbs
p; Nestor winced, outraged. Why would this happy sight make him feel as if he would burst apart, as if the pain inside him was a viscous mud flowing through his veins? He was shaken by the old aches: when that happened, he would think “María,” but thoughts about his wife and children sank him into a deeper gloom.

  All the same, he changed into a pair of blue bathing trunks and soon was lying out by the pool. The waiter brought him a tall glass of that tropical rum punch, and the initial swallow eased his spirit. Then he started to feel friendlier about the whole business with the girls and the time away from his family, so that when one of the three girls, a brunette, sat down beside him, asking, “Are you going to come out with us tonight? We’re going over to the El Morocco to catch an orchestra and dance. . .”

  And she called over to Cesar, “What’s that orchestra called?”

  “The René Touzet Orchestra. Brother, why don’t you come along?”

  “I’ll see,” he answered tentatively, though he went everywhere with his older brother and hated to be left alone.

  They had remained by the pool drinking until seven-thirty. Around four the waiter had brought them a tray of turkey, ham, and cheese club sandwiches, and they had talked about doing the I Love Lucy show and how everyone had been so kind to them. And they mentioned that they had a mambo orchestra in New York. One of the girls had a bit part in a Ricardo Montalban film called Desperadoes from the Land of the Golden Sun. Ricardo was a “dreamboat,” she said. And Cesar looked at her and said, “Well, you’re a fleet of dreamboats, baby.”

  Poor Nestor. He could not help looking at one of the girls, a brunette. Her skin was golden-brown from the sunny California life and seemed to glow with the promise of pleasure. Even though he hadn’t said much to her, she seemed to have paired off with him, paying attention to him and making eyes when he’d look over. While the two others frolicked in the pool with Cesar, she had remained beside Nestor on a sun mat, and this struck him as “classier.” Her name was Tracy Belair, and when they later separated so they could get dressed for the night out, she gave Nestor a sweet tongue-nipped kiss. Taking a shower, Nestor thought about that girl and it gave him an erection. But he vowed to do nothing about her.