The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  “Men should stick together, boy, to avoid suffering. Friendship and a few drinks, that’s good. Friends. You know who was good to me? A good guy? Let me tell you, boy. Machito. Manny. There are others, I can’t remember their names now. Everybody good to me. You know who was a swell guy, a hell of a man, who loved me and your father? Desi Arnaz.”

  Then Pedro appeared in the doorway, calmly walked over, and in a quiet voice said to the Mambo King, “Come on, hombre. You’ve had enough, and it’s very late.”

  Pedro had taken hold of his elbow. “I’ll go to bed,” Cesar told him, “but not because you threaten me, but because you’re a man and I respect the request of another man.”

  “Yes, hombre, I appreciate that. Now let’s go down the hall.”

  “I’ll go, but just remember, don’t push me, because I can have a temper.”

  “Yes, yes, sleep, and tomorrow everything will be fine.”

  In her bedroom, lips pursed tightly, one hand formed into a fist, and rapping at her knee through the pink flannel nightdress, Delorita was waiting, waiting for the ex-Mambo King to sleep.

  Pedro was trying to be a nice guy about the whole thing.

  And Eugenio? When the bed had been extended out of the sofa, and his uncle was lying down, still dressed, Eugenio went about the business of removing his socks and shoes.

  No one wanted Cesar Castillo to suffer, certainly not Eugenio. He looked forward to waking his uncle in the mornings. Would creep down the hall from his room to find the man squirming around in the sheets and speaking to himself in a mangled voice, like a man chewing out the side of his mouth on a great big black puro, or Cuban cigar: “Cuba . . . Nestor, you wanna meet a really nice broad? . . . My pinga’s big and hungry, baby . . . And now, ladies and gentlemen, a little canción that me and my brother here, that pretty boy trumpeter, wrote—take a bow and let the ladies get a good look at your mug, bro’. In the imperious night all the joy in my heart radiates like starlight. Brother, why are you crying out so painfully? . . . I should’ve married a long time ago and behaved myself, right, bitch? Someone, quick! Put out the fire! Yes, I’m very well acquainted with Mr. Arnaz, you know we’re old pals from Oriente Province,Cuba. You know, if it wasn’t for that fucking revolution down in Cuba now, I would go back.”

  Face twisted in his sleep and tormented, as if inside him there was a hell, his uncle filled with caverns and flames and whirls of black smoke. A cool man’s hell, however, just as on the cover of “Mambo Inferno.” Bernardito the artist drew it (and “Welcome to Mamboland,” too). Hell with conga-playing devils and horn-headed women in red leotards, the musicians themselves depicted as black silhouettes perched on ledges in the distance. That hell inside, something painful there so that he moaned, turned in bed, and then abruptly, as if sensing the good intentions of his nephew, eyes popping open . . .

  He fit in with the household but knew that he would soon have to move. He didn’t have much money saved, though from time to time a check could be expected to turn up, royalties mostly from “Beautiful María of My Soul,” which had been published jointly in Nestor and Cesar Castillo’s names. Although musicians came over to the house to see if he wanted to jam or head out to a club, he either agreed and failed to turn up or simply told his friends that he preferred to eat dinner and have a few drinks.

  For all his sorrow and confusion, he was fairly social. His little appointment book, in which he used to keep business numbers and club and dance-hall dates, filled with dinner dates. He went out nearly every night for three months. Each afternoon found him restlessly taking a walk through those six blocks from La Salle Street to the shadow of the West Side Highway. He still liked to go out with women, but found the consumption of large meals almost as pleasurable. He was happiest when he would go to someone’s house for dinner and find himself on a blind date. He was always walking down to the plant to get some free steaks from Cousin Pablito. He got big-bellied and had to let out his many suits at the tailor’s. He started to develop his first double chin and his fingers grew thicker, his hands wider. He used to go down for a tacita of coffee in a little joint around the corner from La Salle Street, and the cup would seem like a doll-house coffee cup in his hand.

  He did not sing, he did not write or play music and took to standing around on the street corners. At hepcat bongo-player parties he smoked reefers and slipped into a pretty springtime, then into a deep gloom. He still liked to let loose, dancing and trying to put the make on as many women as possible, drinking his heart out, but when he did so, he also tended to get out of control. His memory on some nights? Of being led by three or four men down a stairway. Of standing on a subway platform, unable to read the numbers on the train. Behind all that, there was always Delorita reminding him day in and day out that he would have to find his own place.

  “Yes, I know. Today,” he would say.

  He would turn up at parties and people would wonder how he could have let himself go. Didn’t he know that people still wanted to hear him sing? Didn’t it mean something that his picture was still up on the wall of Violeta’s restaurant, alongside Tito Puente, Miguelito Valdez, and Noro Morales? And what could he have thought, walking by the window of the Paris Beauty Salon, Benny’s Photography Studio, and the hardware store and seeing himself in that white silk suit, posed with Nestor and Desi Arnaz? He certainly didn’t forget about Mr. Arnaz. Every now and then he would head downstairs and sit on the stoop, writing letters. Letters to Cuba, in a state of political change; letters to his daughter, letters to old girlfriends, and letters to Mr. Arnaz.

  But what of it? One day he got tired of his inactivity and hooked up with a friend and got himself a cart, selling coquitos: ice-sludge cones served up with mamey, papaya, and strawberry syrup for fifteen cents each, a business he foolishly got into with two hundred dollars of his savings. He spent the summer out on the corner of 124th Street and Broadway selling and giving away these ices to the kids from the projects, whose affection he relished. He would keep himself cool by drinking down Rheingold beer. Some days, he would stare off into the distance, his forehead warmed by the incredible sunlight, his attention caught by the sound of some young guy in his apartment practicing scales on the trumpet, his mind drifting off to the past, his body shaking from that past’s influence over him. One day he got tired of the coquitos cart and gave it away to a kid named Louie, a lanky Puerto Rican who took his place on the corner, making good money so that he could buy himself some nice clothes. Another day, he sat on the living-room couch without moving for an hour. Leticia, who adored him, climbed all over his shoulders and back, a thin little pigtailed creature who kneaded his thickening flesh as if it were a heavy mass of potter’s clay. Eugenio made it his habit to play wherever Uncle Cesar happened to be. It made him feel good to be around his uncle, a simple feeling of connection like a thread in the air.

  Pablito was really concerned for his favorite cousin and, on one afternoon when Cesar came by to buy some more meat, offered him his old job back, on a temporary basis, filling in for men who were away on vacation. He took it and worked like an animal for the month of September 1960, carrying on his shoulders half carcasses of beef weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, that sensation of weight on his back not very different from what he’d feel sometimes in his dreams when he carried the corpse of his brother, whose arm Cesar would tug as if to awaken him. (His brother, who sometimes opened his eyes and said, “Why don’t you leave me in peace.”)

  He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with himself. From time to time, with a few drinks in him, he would head uptown to 135th Street to hang around with Manny, his old Mambo King bassist, who would try to talk Cesar into starting up another conjunto. The Mambo Kings only lasted out the year Cesar left. Miguel Montoya went off to California to find his fortune recording piano Muzak albums, and the other musicians, like Manny, their moment of glory gone forever, settled into solving the ordinary problems of life.

  Things were working out for Manny. He was one of those
practical fellows who kept sober at parties and frugally saved his money. After seven years with the Mambo Kings, he’d saved enough bread to buy himself a bodega, which he ran with a brother. Truth was that the scene was slowing up and jobs were fewer and harder to come by. There were enough low-paying jobs at Saturday-night church dances, graduation parties, and in uptown social clubs and Latin Exchanges, but the resort gigs went to the biggest musicians like Machito, Puente, and Prado, and, in any case, the season was limited. The same thing happened with the big dance halls, joints like the Palladium, the Tropic Palms, the Park Palace. And as for cities like Havana? Castro had kicked the Mafia out and closed down all the big clubs, the Club Capri and the Sans Souci and the Tropicana; and those musicians who were now leaving Cuba for the States were also hustling, the scene getting even tighter. With a wife and three kids to support, he was happy to own that business. In the afternoons, Cesar would walk uptown and sit with Manny behind the counter, helping out with little chores like going into the storeroom to get more chorizo links or another case of shortening. Or if a kid came in to buy a guava pastry or some gum balls out of the round plastic containers on the glass case over the meat display, Cesar would pick these out with tongs, wrap them up in wax paper, and hand them over to the customer. A radio played. Manny had his own copy of that Mambo Kings photograph, hung up behind the counter, the thirteen musicians pictured in white silk suits atop that art-deco seashell bandstand, once again smiling through the squiggles of signatures for all the world to see, but Cesar liked to keep a low profile, getting some salty bacalao or cooking up on a hot plate behind the counter some chorizos and eggs for them to eat for lunch.

  When customers recognized him—“Aren’t you Cesar Castillo the singer?”—he would nod yes, and then shrug; he had maintained an elegant manner. In a cotton shirt and pleated linen pantalones from Mexico, he wore golden bracelets on his wrist and three rings on each hand, a black-brimmed panama pulled low over his brow. When people asked him what he was doing, he just shrugged again. His face would turn red. But then he decided to fall back on the explanation that he was putting together another orchestra, and that seemed to satisfy people.

  Sometimes Manny came up with some business proposition. He was always pushing for Cesar to use his talents: his looks, his charm, his singing ability.

  “You know, Cesar, if you don’t want to go through the grind of an orchestra again, maybe we could do something on the other end, like put together a supper club. A quiet place, not so much for a younger wild crowd but for people our age. Where they could get some dinner, and maybe we’ll have some musicians, too.”

  “Maybe sometime,” Cesar would say. “But for now . . . I don’t know.”

  But the truth was that hearing a melody, humming a song, thinking of a lyric reminded him of Nestor. Never happy in life, his brother had died. Period. Punto, end of the canción. The few times he had started to consider Manny’s offers to put another orchestra together, his interest would peak and then his bones would grow hollow, whistling with a grief over the rotting corpse of Nestor.

  Wince, swallow of rum. The melody of “The Cuban Cha-cha-cha” playing in the Hotel Splendour, and the Mambo King feeling an ache in his sides, getting up from the chair to stretch; itch between his legs, and those voices from next door again, voices creamy with pleasure.

  He was still in the habit of going to the park in the nice weather with Eugenio to throw a ball; sometimes he went by himself, a solitary figure sitting up on the grassy hill watching the river and thinking. He sometimes sat for an hour. The river went by, and on the river, boats passed. The water curled in waves sidewise, foam rippled. Light glistened in triangulated waves, like silver dust being sprinkled by the wind. The wind pushed the clouds. Birds passed overhead; the river flowed. Traffic in two directions on the highway. The wind blew through the trees, the grass wavered, dandelions dissipated, the grass parted under the snouts of hounds. A white butterfly. A leopard-winged butterfly. A multi-knobbed centipede crawling down a tree. The knots in the tree, oozing tiny arrowhead-shaped bugs. People walking, kids throwing a ball, college students playing cricket, folksinger sitting on the stone wall playing a steel-stringed guitar and kicking his feet up, bicyclists in two directions, baby carriages, mamas in curlers and chinos pushing strollers, then the rrrring rrring of the Good Humor truck and children running, the ex-Mambo King giving in to the pleasure of observing life around him and leaning back on the ground and breathing softly and slowly enough that he could begin to discern the circular movement of the earth, the pull of the continents and the surges of the ocean, everything in motion, the earth, the sky, and beyond, he thought one afternoon, the stars.

  He’d started to read Nestor’s book, the only book he’d ever seen Nestor reading. While going through Nestor’s effects, Cesar had decided to hold on to it, why he did not know. He’d thumb through the pages, reading the passages that Nestor had underlined and starred: passages about ambition and personal fortitude, about overcoming odds and seizing the future.

  “Why, Mr. Vanderbilt,” he asked the book, “did my brother accidentally or not so accidentally take his life?”

  The book didn’t reply, though the passages were generally positive about life management.

  He thumbed through more of the pages and for a moment he felt a jolt of ambition. For a moment he enjoyed the prospect of having a plan in motion, no matter how vague it seemed then. Something to look forward to in the future. Something to keep him busy. He knew now that he had to do something with himself or he’d turn into one of the bums on the street. He read more of the book and its encouraging passages and soon began to fall asleep. It was a sleep in which all sound from the world fell away, a deep, sturdy sleep.

  One afternoon, the landlady’s brother, Ernie, fell down a stairway and broke his back. Within a few weeks, a sign made with black marker on a piece of cardboard appeared in the corner of the window by which Mrs. Shannon perpetually sat, smoking cigarettes and watching television and the street. Now her brother had taken to a bed and the normal duties of the building were proving too much for this lady. The sign said: “Superintendent wanted. See Apt. 2.”

  She was watching Queen for a Day when she heard a knock on her door.

  Cesar was standing in the doorway, hat in hand, hair slicked back and sweet-scented with cologne and Sen-Sen. She thought he might be there with some complaint about the water, which had been acting up, but instead of complaining he said: “Mrs. Shannon, I saw your sign in the window and wanted to speak to you about that job.”

  A tingle went through her body, because when Cesar said “job” he pronounced it “yob,” just like that Ricky Ricardo fellow.

  She smiled and let him into the chaos of her living room, which smelled of mildewy rugs, beer, and cabbage. She was excited, even honored, that there was something she could do for this man. Why, he was practically a celebrity.

  “Are you really interested in this?”

  “Yes, I am.” He pronounced “jes” instead of “yes,” and “jam” for “am.”

  “See, things have been a little slow for me on the music end, and I would like to have a regular income.”

  “Do you know anything about superintending, electricity, plumbing—any of that?”

  “Oh yes, when I first came to this country I worked,” he lied, “as a super for two years in a building downtown. It’s on 55th Street.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s not the best work, but not the worst,” she said. “If you really want to do it, I can give you a trial, and if it doesn’t work out, you know I don’t want any hard feelings.”

  “And if it does work out?”

  “You get paid and your rent free. There’s an apartment rented by some college students opening up next month. You would get that and twenty-five dollars a week. If everything’s all right.” Then she added, “It’s not union, you know.” Then: “Would you like a beer?”

  “Yes.”

  She went into the kitchen and he looked aro
und. He wasn’t one to criticize apartments, but Mrs. Shannon’s living room was dense with newspapers and butt-filled bottles, glasses of beer, and yellow-tinged milk. One pretty picture caught his eye, however: a hand-tinted photo of a clover-covered meadow in Ireland, the country of her ancestors. He liked that.

  As she came out of the kitchen with two glasses of beer, she felt enchanted and somehow elated at getting Cesar Castillo to work for her.

  She sat in her easy chair, saying, “You know, I still think about how you and your brother were on that I Love Lucy show. You wouldn’t believe it, but I once saw Lucille Ball on the street in front of Lord and Taylor’s around Christmastime. She seemed like a nice lady.”

  “She was.”

  “And Ricky, you were pals with him?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked him over admiringly; he didn’t know what she might be thinking. He wanted everything to be over with quickly. He didn’t want to go through any long route to find a new life for himself. No way would he go back, despite his longings, into the life of a bandleader. Walking down the hill from the park, and feeling buoyed by the practical advice of Mr. Vanderbilt, he had seen the sign in the window and decided that he would take the first step toward security. Better than dealing with club owners, and petty gangsters, and with the agony of pure memory. Besides, it all seemed to make sense. There wasn’t so much work involved, and he would always have a roof over his head. And if he changed his mind and wanted to play music again, he would have the time to do so. He could not recall that the superintendent of his building had ever worked particularly hard, only that he often saw the man heading underground to the basement. Somehow he found the idea of the basement appealing.

  “Yes,” he continued. “Mr. Arnaz is a gentleman.”

  He milked it for everything it was worth, delighting her. Then she offered him another beer.

  She came back into the living room a few minutes later, holding a beer and an old cheap Stella guitar with a warped neck. “Would you sing something for me?”