The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  “You understand that what happened between me and your mother had nothing to do with you, child . . . I have always cared for you, haven’t I, child? Written you letters and sent you things. Yes or no? I just don’t like to think that you see me in a bad light, when I’m not that way. Do you see me that way, child?”

  “No, Papi.”

  His spirit bolstered, he began to speak to her as if he would be back the next day and the next to see her.

  “Perhaps next time we can go to the movies?” And: “If you like, we can make a little trip to Oriente one day. Or you can come to see me in New York.”

  Then: “But you know, child, now that you’re growing up, maybe I should come back here to Havana. Would you like that?”

  And she nodded that she would.

  When he took her home later, she was happy. From the doorway he could see a pleasant-looking man sitting in the parlor, a book open on his lap.

  “Can I come back to see her tomorrow?”

  “No. Tomorrow we’re going away.”

  “Then when I come back from Oriente?”

  “Yes, if we’re here. But you know she’s not your child anymore, Cesar. She’s the daughter of my husband now, and her name is Mariela Torres.”

  The worst telegram he had ever sent in his life, to Las Piñas shortly after the wreck in which his brother was killed, saying: “Nestor has been in accident from which he will never recover,” a message it took him a long time to word, unable as he was to say the blunt truth. He imagined his mother reading and reading those words over and over again. He could have written: “Nestor was driving and I was fucking around with a girl, but I would have been a fool to pass her up, she was so good-looking: my fingers were playing with the buttons of her blouse, my fingertips were touching her breasts, her nipples were taut between them, her hands were touching me, when things got out of control. He was drunk and the car slid off the road, hitting a tree.”

  And he imagined it again: a kiss, laughter, the honking of a car horn, the words “Dios mío,” a terrific groan of metal, smell of gasoline, smoke, blood, the mangled heavy chassis of a sporty 1956 DeSoto.

  (And behind that? An inkling, since he was close to death himself now, of what his brother felt like. Inside a doorless room and wanting to get out, his brother pounding on the walls, hurtling against them.)

  Two of his older brothers, Eduardo, who had come to New York for the funeral, and Miguel, were waiting for him at the Las Piñas station. He embraced them with all the strength in his limbs. They were wearing guayaberas and linen pantalones. The song “Cielito Lindo” was playing out of a radio in the stationmaster’s office. The stationmaster was leaning forward over the ticket counter, reading a newspaper. On the wall, a framed portrait of Batista, President of the Republic of Cuba; an overhead fan.

  He’d always planned a triumphant return to Las Piñas. He used to joke with Nestor about how, in emulation of the Hollywood movies, he would drive into Las Piñas in a fancy automobile, laden with nice gifts from the States, pockets filled with money. Regret in his heart that he hadn’t returned to Las Piñas in eleven years, though he had been back to Havana for carnival a few times and to play Mr. High-Life around his friends. And now? He had returned out of guilt: his mother had written him letters saying things like “At night I pray to God that I see you again before I am too old. My arms feel empty without you, my son.”

  They made their way to the farm by a dirt road, their carriage taking them along the river. A column of palm trees and houses built out over the water on one side, and dense wood on the other. The trees were thick with black birds and he could not help remembering that day when he was a kid and he and Nestor were away from the farm, walking through the forest, looking for hollow tree trunks that they might make into drums. They were walking in the wood for twenty minutes without hitting light, and then they came to a clearing, where they heard a rustling in the trees. Above them a few birds were flying from the high branches of trees on one side to the high branches of trees on the other. And they were followed by about twenty more birds. Then fifty, then a hundred birds. Then a rustling in the distance, as if a strong wind were blowing through the treetops, but it wasn’t the wind: the treetops were shaking, leaves and fronds shuddering as if they were being whipped, and then the shuddering grew even louder and then clarified: it was a river of black-and blue- and light-brown-winged birds rushing through the forest in migration. As the brothers stood there, the sky over them grew dense with the flight of a million birds fluttering their wings, shooting between the treetops as if storming through the world, so many that they could not see the sunlight anywhere in the forest and the sky turned nearly black for an hour, that’s how long it took those birds to pass.

  Remember that, brother?

  Then there was the old hut where that lanky black man Pucho, who used to play the guitar and lord over his hens, first gave him music lessons. They passed an abandoned water mill, walls half collapsed, and then the old stone tower from the time of the conquistadores. They passed the road to the Díaz farm, the road to the Hernández farm.

  Then they came to their farm. He remembered the approach well. As a young man he used to make the three-mile trip from Las Piñas by mule, a guitar slung over his shoulder, a cane hat pulled down low over his brow. When they turned into the farm road, he saw his mother for the first time in many years. She was on the porch of their simple, tin-roofed house, conversing with Genebria, the woman who’d wet-nursed the Mambo King.

  They had about ten acres of land, a pen where the gray pigs played gaily in their swill, a few tired horses, and a long, low hen coop. And beyond it, a field of wild grass ringed by fruit trees.

  When he saw his mother, he thought she would say, “Why did you let your brother die? You know he was the light of my world?”

  But his mother had much love in her heart for him, and she said, “Oh, my son, I’m so happy you’ve come home.”

  Her kisses were tender. She was thin, almost weightless in his arms. She held him for a long time, repeating: “Grandón! Grandón! You’re so grown!”

  He was happy to be home. His mother’s affection was so strong that for one brief moment he had an insight into love: pure unity. That’s all she became in those moments, the will to love, the principle of love, the protectiveness of love, the grandeur of love. Because for a few moments he felt released from this pain, which had withered the coil at the bottom of his spine; felt as if his mother was an open field of wildflowers through which he could run, enjoying the sunlight in his face, or like the night sky cut by the planets and the mists of far away—“That veil over the hidden face of Dios,” as she used to say. And as she held him, the only words she had to say: “Oh, son, oh, son of mine.”

  (On top of this, the memory of how he felt a few years later, in 1962, when he heard that his mother had died, at the age of sixty-nine. The telegram shot out black threads that flew into his eyes, stinging them like dust motes, so that he, the man who never cried, began to weep. “My mother, the only mother I’ll ever have.”

  He kept rereading that telegram as if his concentration would rearrange the meaning of the words. He wept until his body shook and his stomach was in knots, until his desire to repress the sadness drew into his chest and he felt an iron band tightening around his heart.)

  “Oh, son, I’m so happy you’ve come home.”

  Being around them again brought back a few of his childhood longings, and mostly these had to do with the ladies of the house. In his dreams of youth—and later, when his mother was dead—she would be represented by light. His happiest hours as a boy were spent on the porch or in the back yard, napping with his head on her lap, the sun burning silver-white through the treetops above them. His mother, María, saying, “Pssssssh, niño, come here,” and taking him by the hand into the yard to that tin tub set out on the patio under the immense acacia tree, where she would wash his thick, curly hair: that was when the Mambo King had sweeter ideas about women, when his mo
ther was the morning light. Genebria, whose breast had tasted like cinnamon and salt, would bring the boiled water, and this water, tinged pink and yellow and blue by the sunlight, would drip down over his head and onto his privates, what a pleasure that was, looking up into the attentive and loving eyes of his mother. Now, dirty from his long journey, he went to his old room near the back patio, where he stripped down to a pair of boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt and called out to his mother in the kitchen: “Mamá, do me a favor and wash my hair.”

  So the old scene was reenacted, with the Mambo King bent over a tub in the yard, eyes squinting with the pleasure of simple affection: not a thing had seemed to change then: his mother, now older, poured the water on his head, scrubbed him with soap, and massaged his scalp with her tender hands.

  “Ay, hijo,” she repeated like a horn line, “I’m so happy that you’re home.”

  Genebria was there to wipe the water off his head. After all those years apart, the Mambo King couldn’t pass her in the hallway without giving her bottom a little pinch. He’d always had a special fondness for her, thankful for the complimentary way she’d gasped one afternoon many, many years ago. He was at that age when he would fall asleep and dream about the stretching of his bones, when his body was an expansion of flesh and organs, when pleasure hummed in his spine, wrapped around his hips, and burst out through his sex. He was at the age when he wanted to flaunt his newfound virility before the world like a boy dragging a crocodile through a house. He was in the bathtub going about the rubbing and cleaning of his private parts when his thing, ready to burst with redness and milk, came up, bobbing like a bottle of wine in the water. Genebria was cleaning the house, and when he heard her singing, he called to her, “Genebria, can you come here?” And when she did, the future Mambo King stood up and, pulling his thing, said, “Mira! Mira! Look! Look!”

  “Stop that, you beast! You little pig!” She gasped and ran back into the house.

  Smiling, he held on to it and sank down under the water, his milk oozing out like white octopus ink. Then a silver-edged redness exploded inside his shut eyelids and he had the sensation that the world had abruptly tipped over. He spent many of those days in a dream of pulling, prodding, choking, banging, wetting, and exploding this new instrument. As for Genebria, what was her new nickname for Cesar, that name she’d say with fondness and curiosity?

  “Hombrecito,” at first, and then, “El macho.”

  Now, when he saw her and said, “Mira, mira!” it was with great sadness.

  “Here, Genebria, I’ve brought you some perfume.”

  And he gave her a little bottle of Chanel No. 5.

  It was perfume and a hat for his mother, and Italian wallets and Ronson lighters for his three brothers. And, yes, a bundle of recordings and some photographs of Nestor and the family.

  His mother sat on a rattan rocker on the porch, looking through the bundle of records. The smooth, modern 1950s design of some of the record covers, with flowing musical notes, New York skylines, and sharp cut-out conga drums, made her smile. And the lettering was in English, and on three of the covers Nestor was posed side by side with his older brother.

  “Nestor,” she called him. “My son who is in paradise.”

  In his room he dressed slowly, knowing that before long he would see his father, Pedro Castillo, again. He heard horses outside, and his father chewing out one of his sons, “I’m not going to pay you for doing nothing,” and in the same indignant tone he’d always used around him.

  What was it that the old man used to say? “You want to waste your life in the dance halls? Suit yourself, but when you need money, don’t come back to me. You become a musician and you’ll be a poor man all your life.”

  He heard the porch screen door and his father’s boots on the parlor floor. In a moment he would go into the parlor and embrace the man, who wouldn’t give a damn that Cesar, despite their past troubles, was still trying to show him respect and affection.

  As he stood before the mirror rubbing a lilac lotion into his thick hair, he heard his father’s voice again. “María, you say he’s back? Well, then, where is he? Has he come back to do some work around here?”

  And he shut his eyes, not quite sure just how he would remain calm, because to hear his father’s voice was to invite bodily disaster. Feeling a flutter of restrained violence just below his heart, he dallied by the mirror, telling himself, “Tranquilo, hombre, tranquilo.”

  He took a swig of rum and made his way to the parlor to see his father again. He was forty years old.

  Sitting in the Hotel Splendour, good and drunk, Cesar had the worst trouble thinking about his father; even remembering his appearance was difficult. He had a picture that he’d always liked, one of those thin, cracked photographs, yellow at the edges, with the back stamped “Oliveres Studios, Calle Madrid no. 20, Holguín.” The only one he had of his father. It was a humorous picture taken around 1926 or so, the man in a bow tie and a linen suit, a big cowboy-looking hat, and a thick, droopy guajiro’s mustache, sad Castillo eyes, stiffened expression—leaning his weight on a cane. And right behind him, a movie poster of Charlie Chaplin from The Gold Rush, Chaplin in the same pose.

  “The golden time . . .” he thought.

  He had one beautiful memory of his Papi taking him and his brothers into Las Piñas, where they spent the morning in a café among the men, eating sandwiches and drinking batidas—fruit malteds . . . Farmers in that café, caged hens by the doorway, and the man chopping up fruit on a counter dripping with juice. That day his father, Don Pedro, had lifted him off the ground and had stood talking with the men in the bar, the future Mambo King in his arms. He was a gaunt man, smelled of tobacco, and when he drank his tacitas of coffee, he’d have to wipe his mustache clean of froth. He had huge knuckles and his cheeks and forehead were burned Indian-red from his countless days in the fields.

  But that was the only time it was so beautiful. When he would think about his early childhood, he’d remember cringing like a frightened animal when he was near his father. He would see red and black and silver birds streaking across space in swiftly forming arcs, and his face, his ribs, his back, his legs would sting from beatings with fists and a stick. His older brothers, who were better behaved, got beatings, too—in the name of respect and authority and because their Papi did not know what to do with his anger and foul moods. They grew up into more or less respectful and weary sons, with shattered expressions and broken spirits. While Cesar, in his father’s words, “got worse.” But he never understood why the man beat him. He used to cry out, cringing in a corner, “What have I done to you? Why are you doing this?” He felt like a happy little dog that only wanted a little kindness from that man, but he got beat and beat and beat. It used to make him cry for hours, and then after a while he couldn’t cry anymore. He tried to be happy, playing jokes on his brothers and running through the house, a continuous burst of energy, like his dancing, like his music, from too many slaps in the face. He’d gotten so used to the man beating him into the ground that after a while he seemed to enjoy it, taunting the man and challenging him to beat him again and again. He would roll on the floor laughing because his father sometimes hit him so much that the man’s fists ached. His father would beat him until a strange look would come over Pedro’s face, a look of sadness and futility.

  “Son,” he would say, “I only want your love and respect.”

  “You know your father came to Cuba without so much as a penny. He never had a father to look after him, the way he looks after you. He’s known only work, hijo, sweat.”

  “Your Papi was cheated by fate. He’s too trusting. People have robbed him because he’s always had a good heart. God was not generous. Tomorrow he’ll change. God will pardon him. He’s a worker and a provider. You must be tolerant of him. Forgive your father. He loves you, niño. His heart is made of gold. Never forget that he is your father. Never forget that he is your blood.”

  No softness in Pedro’s face, no kindness,
no compassion. Pedro was a real man. He worked hard, had his women on the side, showed his strength to his sons. His manliness was such that it permeated the household with a scent of meat, tobacco, and homemade rum. It was thick enough that their mother, María, would fill the house with flowers, which she put in vases everywhere. And eucalyptus in pots to swallow up this scent of manliness that wafted through the rooms in wavy bands like heat off a steaming street.

  He didn’t have much money and had never learned how to read or write, signed his name with an X. But he claimed a high standing in the local society of Las Piñas because of his gallego blood and his white Spaniard’s skin, which placed him above the mulattoes and Negroes of town.

  The Mambo King remembered a hurricane that drowned many of the horses and cows and pigs, who were found floating in the water the next morning, with bloated bellies and distended tongues. He remembered someone knocking on the door of their house one night, and when his father answered the door, a knife was plunged into his shoulder. He remembered the military men with whom his father dealt in Holguín. Over the years he’d been cheated more than once and considered himself, after all his efforts, a “poor man.”

  His Papi was so tense that he suffered from a plague of maladies that had to do with his bad moods, debts, and hard work. He sometimes suffered from a hysterical eczema and prurigo that so dried his skin it became as hard and brittle as parchment. The Mambo King could remember days when Pedro’s body looked as if he’d just finished running naked through a forest of thorn-bushes, all scratched up and covered with sores. On hot days he would become so agitated that the only thing he would wear was a pair of calzoncillos. His father would come in from a stone house at the field’s edge, where he sometimes holed up, racked with the pain of hot salty sweat on those tormented limbs. Without a good word for anyone, he would head out to the tub in the back yard, where he would soak in a bath to which María had added a rose-scented lotion, with an alcohol base, that only made his condition worse. Soaking for hours in the shade of a pomegranate tree, he’d rest his head on the tub’s rim, sip rum, and in agony watch the sky.