The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Yet, by eight o’clock, another drink had given him a feeling of weightlessness and elation and he suddenly filled with the kind of confidence that Mr. Vanderbilt described in his book. By eight-fifteen he felt immortal.

  The phone rang, and it was Nestor who picked it up.

  “Hello, this is Desi Arnaz. How are you fellows? Listen, I’m just calling to make sure that everything’s okay with you. You like the hotel and everything? Good.” Thanking the brothers again, he added: “And let’s not forget each other. Okay?”

  Next thing he knew, Nestor was sitting at a table in the El Morocco, drinking champagne, the five of them grinning happily for a strolling photographer. This was a real classy joint. Everything on the menu was written in a florid script and had a French name, and many of the items cost as much as what he earned in a week at the meat-packing plant.

  “Order whatever you like,” Cesar told everybody.

  And why the hell not? Arnaz had told them to send him the bill. Soon their table was piled high with just about every dish on the menu: a silver bowl of poor shriveled-up snails like those which used to swarm over the patio of their house in Cuba after a rain, all black, sad-looking, and cooked with garlic; platters of filet mignon, lobster, shrimps, scalloped potatoes; and bottle after bottle of champagne. This was followed up at some indecent hour by bowls of baked Alaska and Italian baci—chocolate and vanilla ice-cream balls dipped in dark chocolate washed down with French cognac. And there had been intermittent kisses. At one point Nestor’s brunette looked at him for a long time and declared, “You know something, sweetheart, you look just like what’s-his-name, Victor Mature, isn’t he Spanish?” Later he became Gilbert Roland.

  The orchestra sounded great, and after a while the five of them were out on the dance floor having a good time. In the midst of all this, however, Nestor decided to call New York, and that would make him wince the next day because he wouldn’t be able to remember what he had said or how he had sounded. Why did he think he’d left Delores crying?

  When they left the club, everything dissolved, and then he was stumbling through the Garden of Allah’s door and pinching his companion’s bottom through her silver-lamé gown. More champagne bottles popped. And next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes and looking over at his brother: Cesar was sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, one of the women’s brassieres wrapped around his neck like a tie, toasting everybody with champagne: America! Desi Arnaz! René Touzet! And love and romance!

  Making zigzags across the floor, the two brothers and their three companions tried to dance the mambo. Then Cesar started to serenade his two women and he went off with them into his separate bedroom, leaving St. Nestor with temptation herself. How had they ended up on the couch, tongue-kissing? The young woman became more and more feline with each kiss. She wore a flame-red brassiere and little red panties, and she had a black mole in the shape of a flower just over her belly button. Her glowing body seemed so perfect, so healthy, so filled with life. He went mad kissing her. Naked and wet with his kisses, she said, “Wait a minute, amigo, you have to take off your clothes.”

  And when he had his trousers off he felt a cringe of shame because, after all, he was a married man, a good Cuban, and a diehard Catholic with two children at home in New York, but that didn’t stop Mother Nature, or the woman from taking a long look at him and saying, “Brother, where have you been all my life?”

  Then he awoke and in the dark made his way across the room on boneless legs to the bathroom, where he vomited. He went outside to smoke a cigarette: the sky was clear, thick with swirly stars that reflected in the pool. Why was he feeling so bad? Why had he felt so bad all his short life?

  About five in the morning, he woke the brunette, who smiled and embraced him, saying, “Hello, lover.”

  But he said, “You should go home now, huh?”

  And that was that. She dressed and he sat watching her and feeling bad. Maybe it was the way he had said it, without an ounce of affection, after all he’d probably said to her when they were making love.

  He tried to go back to sleep—they were to catch an eight o’clock flight home—but already the sun was rising. And so he took out that book of his and began to read an inspiring passage that he’d underlined: “In today’s America one must think about the future. Ally yourself with progress and tomorrow! The confident, self-assured man looks to the future and never backwards to the past. The heart of every success is a plan that takes you forward. In moments of doubt you must remember that every obstacle is only a temporary delay. That every problem can be solved. When there is a will there is a way. You, too, can be a man of tomorrow!”

  In the days after the broadcast of the show, they became celebrities on La Salle Street: gaunt, ruddy-cheeked Irishmen would step out of the shadows of the Shamrock Bar on the corner and into the late-afternoon light and say to the brothers, “Can I stand you to a glass of beer?” People would stick their heads out of the window to shout hello, passersby stopped them on the street and wished them well. Gossiping old ladies who sat in front of the stoop on frail, thin-legged chairs whispered about the fame that had abruptly descended upon those two “Spanish fellows” who lived in 500; for weeks after, the two brothers had regular fans among the Irish and Germans on the block, and even those people who hadn’t seen the show knew about it and treated the musicians with a new respect. Their biggest fan was their landlady, Mrs. Shannon, who had heard about the show from Delores and had spread the word all over the neighborhood, proud of the fact that she had them as tenants.

  It hadn’t always been that way. After he and Nestor had moved in with Pablo—“Now, there was a good Spanish man for you”—the parties had started, week after week and late into the early mornings, and were so raucous that she would spend half the night banging on the pipes and calling the cops to straighten them out. She had not minded the roly-poly Pablo and his demure, obedient wife—he had always been good to Mrs. Shannon, bringing her free steaks and chops from the plant—but not these two machos with their trail of women and wolfish-looking friends, always drinking and singing and carrying on at night in their apartment upstairs. By the time that Pablo moved out in 1950, the brothers had turned the place into a “house of sin.”

  The worst bit of gossip about the goings-on in that “house of sin” upstairs came from one of her neighbors, Mrs. O’Brien, who on hot nights used to go sit on the rooftop by the water tower with her husband, to catch a breeze off the Hudson River, maybe drink a few beers, and eat American cheese, ham, and mayonnaise sandwiches. One evening when they were up there, Mr. O’Brien felt restless and decided to walk around the rooftop to check out the coping. The brothers were having one of their parties downstairs: a row of six windows with the shades pulled halfway down, blaring phonograph, voices, the sight of a room thickly packed with legs and swirling hands, hands holding drinks—that’s all he could really see. He was there looking down at the whole business when he heard noises—like someone panting and groaning up a steep hill. Those sounds were coming from the neighboring roof, and when he took a look, he saw what appeared to be a man and a woman on a blanket, hiding in the shadows, making love. Out of the man’s shadow protruded a large and shiny penis that in the dark resembled a piece of greased pipe. His wife had joined him and they remained for a long time watching the proceedings, aghast and envious, and then decided to call the police. When they reported the incident of beastly fornication, Mrs. Shannon blushed and asked, “What will they do next?”

  Despite the many complaints she had about them, she slowly became much taken with the older brother. He would often appear at her door to pay the rent, bring her little presents: food and pastries left over from the wedding and engagement parties that the brothers played; steaks from the plant. And whenever the Mambo Kings made a new record he’d give her one. And he was truly apologetic in the aftermath of their parties, saying in a polite voice: “We’re really sorry if we made a racket last night. It’s just that we have no way
of knowing how loud things are”—and that always made her feel better. But there was something else that she liked about him. Fifty years old, stout, ragged-haired, triple-chinned, she believed that the Mambo King somehow found her attractive. Whenever Cesar appeared at her door, he gave her the sense that he found her beautiful: he’d look right into her blue eyes, pure as the morning light, and his brow would arch slightly and a smile would appear at the edge of his lips, as if to say, “My, my.” She had once been an Irish beauty, who, due to a mannish temperament, flew headlong into beer-soaked matronhood. That Cesar seemed even the least bit aware of her former looks made her daydream about a little romance with him, but she kept it to that, a daydream.

  Then the brothers appeared on television and she saw them actually speaking to Lucille Ball, her heart fluttered and she felt a dizziness that lingered intensely at the thought of seeing them. A few days after the show was aired, she went out and had her hair shampooed and set, bought herself a new dress, baked the brothers an apple spice cake, and later shocked her brother by announcing, “I’m going upstairs to see those two Cuban fellas.”

  It was Cesar who opened the door: standing before him, she felt as if she were leaning over the edge of a steep precipice—breathless and with a sense that she would be carried off forever.

  “Yes, Mrs. Shannon?”

  “I just had to tell you, you fellas were really, really great. I saw you on the television.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I, and I baked you a little something, see? It’s a cake. Haven’t baked a cake in a long time, but I used to.”

  Nodding, Cesar said, “Thank you. Why don’t you come in and have a little drink, or some food if you like? Are you going out?” he asked. “You look all dressed up.”

  “No, I can come in for a bit.”

  She followed Cesar down the hallway and past the kids’ wheel carriage and tricycles and through the kitchen into the dining room: they had a long table still set with platters of bacalao—codfish cooked with garlic—black beans, rice, a huge salad, pork chops and steaks from the plant, and a big bowl of yuca: Nestor, in a bow tie and suspenders, was sitting at the end of the table, sucking on a toothpick. The children were playing on the living-room floor while Delores sat at the opposite end of the table, stone-silent, staring at her husband.

  “Everybody, look who’s come to visit us!”

  “Would you like something to eat?”

  She looked over the food and said, “Just a little chops would be fine. And rice.”

  “Delores,” Cesar ordered. “Give Mrs. Shannon a plate of food.”

  She got up and obeyed, and piled the black beans and salad and bacalao on all together: Mrs. Shannon took a seat, picking around all the things she refused to try, but began to devour the pork chops and steak.

  Cesar watched her and said, “But you should try the yuca. It’s like a potato, but tastier.” And clutching his heart, he added, “In my opinion.”

  Mrs. Shannon chewed her meat, enchanted: Cesar complimented her again, and she inquired, “And what were they like, Desi Arnaz and Lucy? Tell me about Lucy?”

  “A really nice woman. A lady.”

  Then he launched into his story about the star treatment in Hollywood, the pink and light blue houses of Beverly Hills, walking down into a club called Ciro’s and spying the actor William Holden in a booth with his arms around a pretty girl. She ate up every word, and Cesar, being a little bit of a ham and an exaggerater, milked their little trip for everything it was worth: visits to lush mansions, a star on every street corner, money everywhere, and there they were, two ordinary fellows, in the midst of it all. Every now and then, Mrs. Shannon would touch her collarbone, exclaiming, “It must have been something!”

  Delores sat confounded over her husband’s growing distance from her: he seemed restless, fidgeting in his chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette, something inside tormenting him: he inhaled deeply, at times almost gasping. Since he’d come back from California, he had been suffering from more intense nightmares, and he seemed to be spending more and more time pacing about the living room. And there was something else: he had a look of doom about him, even if he was always reading that Vanderbilt book with the crumpled pages.

  Later Mrs. Shannon unwrapped the aluminum foil off the apple spice cake, which she had set down on the table, revealing a puffy-topped cake filled with citron chunks, cherries, and raisins. The children jumped up for their slices and the adults converged around the cake, admiringly. It was a delicious cake, like kissing a woman for the first time, thought Cesar; like rum-drenched pineapple, thought Nestor; like eating flan with Poppy, thought Delorita; like chocolate, thought Eugenio; like apple spice cake, thought little Leticia. To realize that this was made by the very same woman whose shrill voice shouted up into the courtyard at two in the morning, screaming, “Will youse fucken turn that shit down!” The same woman who came up the stairs one day and stood at the door wielding a hammer, face red and on the verge of attack. When they finished eating, Cesar said to Mrs. Shannon, “I want to give you something,” and he went into the living room. He used to keep a black briefcase on top of the bass drum of an American drum kit, which sat along with other instruments on a dolly in the corner of the living room beside the couch; he snapped it open and pulled out a black-and-white photograph of himself, Nestor, and Desi Arnaz taken during the stirring finale of “Beautiful María of My Soul”—the three harmonizing, with mouths open, teeth showing, and heads bathed in halos of light. The briefcase was filled with about three hundred copies of that photograph. Their friend Benny the Baby and General Purpose Photographer had taken their studio negative and made up the copies; he would put one in his window alongside a First Communion photo and the picture of a GI home from the war. They had one in the hallway—the original—signed by Arnaz: “To my good friends, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, with a strong love y un abrazo siempre. Desi Arnaz 5/17/55.” He came back into the dining room with one of the photographs, addressed it to Mrs. Shannon, and then gave it to his brother to sign. Mrs. Shannon held this signed photograph to her breast and declared, “Oh, thank you.”

  She stayed until around ten. In the hallway, just beyond the bookcase of the novels that Delores liked to buy, Cesar and Mrs. Shannon stopped for a moment, and in that moment Cesar gave her a deep and nearly loving look, as if he might really kiss her, but he touched her elbow and squeezed her plump shoulders, patting her on the back, as he often did with friends. Escorting her to the door, he thanked her for the cake, and leaned over the railing, watching the roundness that was Mrs. Shannon disappearing down the stairs. Back in the dining room, he pulled up a chair and said to his brother Nestor, “Do you want some more of this cake, brother?” And then, after another slice: “Imagine that, Mrs. Shannon baking a cake for us, and a good cake. Imagine that.”

  THEIR APPEARANCE ON THE show turned out to be a good thing. Desi Arnaz so liked their composition that he paid them a thousand dollars for the rights to perform the song and recorded “Beautiful María of My Soul” in the fall of 1955, when it reached number 8 on the easy-listening charts, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Rosemary Clooney and Eddie Fisher for a week. Among aficionados of the romantic bolero, “Beautiful María of My Soul” became something of a minor classic almost instantly, ranking up there with “Bésame Mucho” and “Siempre en Mi Corazón.” Arnaz himself went on to perform “Beautiful María of My Soul” on the Ed Sullivan show, and soon enough a number of other recording artists did too, notably Nat King Cole (he recorded that song in Havana for his album “Cole Español”; it was perfect for his tender, refined voice, and his accompaniment also featured a horn solo by no less than Chocolate Armenteros). The Ten Thousand Hollywood Strings orchestra did their own cover of it, too. (You can still hear it on the Muzak tapes, stuck between an unbearably cheerful pipe-organ version of “Guantanamera” and “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás!” in supermarkets, shopping malls, airports, and bus-terminal lounges everywhere.) Then one day
Cesar received a call from this fellow named Louie Levitt of RCA Victor, saying that Xavier Cugat was interested in doing his own instrumental version of the song. Permission was granted for the sum of one thousand dollars. With the royalties from all these recordings, the brothers suddenly had some money in their pockets. Altogether they’d make about ten thousand dollars in 1956-57 in royalties from the different recordings.

  The Mambo Kings recorded “Beautiful María of My Soul” as a 45 rpm, and it was on a 33 LP album, a collection of their romantic love songs, called “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.” They sold ten thousand copies of this recording; it was their greatest success. As they’d never had any hits before, even near ones, Cesar was always trying to come up with new catchy dance numbers and experimented with dance steps before the mirror, his hope being to come up with a new craze the way Antonio Arcana did in 1952 with the cha-cha-cha.

  They got a lot of air play on stations like WPIX and WOR radio. And they started to get bookings in first-class joints like the McAlpin Ballroom and the Biltmore Hotel, and they were able to get a few hundred dollars more for the band on weekend engagements. Jobs took them all over the city where the crowds were mixed, Italians and blacks, Jews and Latins. Then Grossinger’s, the Jewish resort, hired them for a month of weekends and they had the luxury of bringing in two other bands for the underbill, Johnny Casanova Rumba Boys and an old favorite, Glorious Gloria Parker and Her All-Girl Rumba Orchestra. But their biggest honor was to play at Grossinger’s on the underbill to Machito’s orchestra. That was the period when teenage girls would nervously approach Cesar Castillo and his brother to ask for their autographs. These girls weren’t sure if Cesar was a star, but he certainly had taken to looking like one, wearing dark Italian sunglasses, a brilliant white ascot, and eight rings on his hands. And he’d sign these autographs as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Soon they got enough jobs out of town that they scraped some money together and bought an old school bus. The first thing they did with the bus was to paint it flamingo-pink, one of Cesar’s favorite colors. In the spirit of color-coordinating the group, the Mambo Kings performed for a time in flamingo-pink, black-lapeled suits. Then Cesar got his friend Bernardito Mandelbaum, the artist, to decorate the bus with palm trees, G clefs, and music notes. They kept the bus parked down in a lot on 126th, off Amsterdam. A new publicity shot was taken of the Mambo Kings: the musicians posed inside the bus with their trombones and saxophones and violins sticking out the windows. They mounted a speaker on the rooftop, through which they played music, and used the bus to get out to Jersey City, Newark, and Danbury, Connecticut. They did not travel long distances: the farthest west they’d ever performed was Philadelphia, for some Cubans there.