The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Then it hit her: “Now I have been sent to hell,” she said.

  “Now, please just sit, I’ll take care of everything.”

  That night he had trouble sleeping, spent hours in tortured thought. Why was he, a cocksure and arrogant macho in his youth, now relegated to fearful thoughts of lifelong loneliness? Why were his knees aching? Why did he feel at times that he walked around with a corpse slung over his shoulders, as if the days after his brother died were somehow repeating themselves?

  Now and then he thought about the bar. For years (since his return from the Merchant Marine) Manny had been after him to go into a partnership, start something up, like a dance hall or a club. And now he was thinking: Wouldn’t be so bad for a fellow like him who knew the music business to set something up, like a Latin cabaret or dance club. The biggest problem would be money. In his head he went through all the prosperous people he knew, people who’d promised to help him out in a jam. There was Miguel Montoya, now living in Arizona; Bernardito, Manny, his cousin Pablo. They all had a few thousand dollars put away. And Pérez. But thirty-five thousand? And beyond that, how much more would he need? That bar was run down, but he could fix it up, repaint the walls, get some lighting, build a little stage. It could be done inexpensively. Certainly he could get a lot of his musician friends to work cheap. Acting as an MC, he’d get up before a microphone and graciously introduce young and old talent. And what if it caught on, becoming as popular as the Havana San Juan or the Tropicana, then everything would fall in place: money, women, and good moods.

  Then he thought about the kind of people who would go to his club. Young, respectable, and fun-loving couples with a few dollars in their pockets, more well-to-do middle-aged people who liked a mix of the old standards and the new . . . His speculations went on until the early morning, and then finally, thinking that there might be something to his idea, he fell asleep.

  Everybody told him he was crazy to get involved with Pérez, even if Pérez walked around, and went to church, wearing a crucifix around his neck. And he knew it, too, but he didn’t care: he put it in the back of his mind. When he daydreamed about the place, he saw it done up as a lush little tropical paradise. Saw himself making like Desi Arnaz as MC and singer (and on the edge of this thought, Nestor) and perhaps becoming more than just a superintendent and pickup musician. But he ignored everyone’s advice. Even after he had a dream about what would happen: that it would open fine and go along nicely for a while, but that Pérez’s people would take it over and turn it into something else. Still, he went for it. Manny and other friends sprang for seven thousand, with Pérez putting up the rest, half as an investment for himself and the rest as a loan to Cesar.

  “I said that I would help you, my friend.”

  By June he had assumed the ownership of the Shamrock and its ice machines, meat freezer, meat grinder, horseshoe bar, lunch counter, jukebox, tables and chairs, cash register, speckled mirror and bar stools. Out of his basement he dragged the tinny upright piano, had the thing tuned, and set it against a wall: there was a dining area which had seen much better days. The walls had been covered with wood paneling and light green Con-Tact paper. These he tore out in favor of mirrored tiles, which he purchased for next to nothing from a friend in the Bronx. Then he set out to build a small stage. He wanted it to be about the size of the stage of the Mambo Nine Club, as if that might invite success. It measured six by twelve feet, just large enough to accommodate a small band. He covered the plywood construction with a plush red carpeting, painted the doorway an ebony black.

  The Irish in the neighborhood knew things were permanently changing when they saw Cesar scraping the shamrocks off the front window. When he finished with that, he got his friend Bernardito the artist to come in as his art director, filled the joint up with rubber palm trees and papier-mâché pineapples. On one of the walls, he stuck a big painting of Havana that he had purchased in New Jersey. Then he put in a flamingo-pink awning that reached the curb, and a fancy neon sign with the words Club Havana flashing in two colors, aquamarine and red, for the window.

  Finally he brought over a few of the hundreds of photographs he had in boxes from his heyday in the mambo era, stuck a few in frames over the bar, signed photographs of everybody from Don Aziapaú to Marion Sunshine. And with them went the framed photograph of Arnaz, Nestor, and himself.

  He decided to charge two dollars’ cover, a dollar a drink, and to offer a simple menu that would feature such dishes as arroz con pollo, rice and beans, fried plantains, and Cuban sandwiches, for which he’d find some poor woman as a cook. Then he had a thousand promotional fliers made up and hired little kids for a buck an hour to tack them up on lampposts, in building lobbies, and under car windshield wipers. When all this had been done, he got into the habit of turning up there after work. He’d walk around the premises, as if it were some kind of dream come true, smoking a big blue cigar and nodding to himself, tapping the counter, posing in front of the bar mirror, and pouring himself drinks.

  Of course it was more complicated than that: he had to apply for licenses, liquor, cabaret, restaurant. He had to have everything inspected by the buildings commission and by the Board of Health, which would not let him open until Pérez took care of the inspectors. There were no problems after that. Pedro advised Cesar about bookkeeping and Pérez provided the “security.”

  “May God bless us, but you know, my friend,” Pérez told him, “if you don’t take the right precautions now, all kinds of trouble may follow.”

  It was decided that Pérez would keep a man around the club, and he gave Cesar a present that he had wrapped up nicely in shiny blue paper: a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver, which the Mambo King bundled in a towel and left jammed behind the boiler in his basement.

  It was a funny thing. Just about a week before they were going to open the club, Cesar had a visitor. He was sitting in the little back room that he used as his office when Frankie, who had been mopping the floors, told Cesar, “Some lady’s here to see you.”

  She was a young hippie woman, maybe thirty. She walked in wearing a suede cowboy jacket and rattlesnake boots. She described herself as a filmmaker and said she was working on something around the theme of “alternate life-styles in the melting pot of the city.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We just want to come in here one night and film. Would that be okay with you?”

  “Will you pay for this?”

  “No, no, it’s not for pay. I don’t make any money on this. It’s for a film about Latins in New York City. I’m doing it for a friend of mine from Columbia.”

  “Not Professor Flores?”

  Flores was a Cuban friend who taught Spanish there.

  “No.”

  She told him that all she wanted was to get a small crew with camera and microphone in one night, film the dancing, and do a few interviews.

  He thought about it and then told her, “I have to talk to my partners about this, but I’m going to tell you okay. We’re opening next Saturday night. And if you want, you can come and make your movie then.”

  Once word got around that the opening of the Club Havana was going to be filmed, it took on something of the air of a glamorous Hollywood event. The filmmaker turned up that Saturday night with her crew. With free music, food, and drinks, people from all over showed up: old friends from the dance halls, musicians and their wives, friends of the family, patrons of the beauty salon where Ana María worked part-time, friends from the street. Soon the men escorted their beautiful women into the place. That first night, Cesar acted as both MC and singer, using an eight-piece band of pickup musicians to back him. In a white silk suit with a carnation in his lapel and a thick cigar in hand, he sang, he shook his hips, patted backs, laughed, urged his friends to enjoy the free food and the big open bar, and found it hard to believe that he had not thought of all this before. And the people seemed to love the place.

  Cesar had asked good dancers he knew to turn up that night. In fact, Bernardito of Brook
lyn had become quite expert at dancing the mambo. And Frankie, middle-aged and worn, was still a professional in his writhing, grinding movements. Spotlight and cameras set out on the dance floor, the dancers went crazy, and the orchestra got into long, epic claves-beat jams, the two drummers, the pianist, two trumpet players (including Cesar, a sweaty mess behind his dark green glasses), flute, saxophone, and bassist played their hearts out. And when the camera turned on him, the Mambo King hammed it up, a trumpet in one hand, rump out, feet turning, his mouth pouting “Oh, baby!” and his hands flailing the air as if his fingertips had caught fire, his body, despite his heft, nimble and bending in all directions and shapes. (Then, during a later song, he performed like a robot, moving his limbs and head as if his joints had been stuffed with gears and cotton.)

  Everybody clapped and laughed, the music sounded great. Even the jaded neighborhood kids who preferred groups like the Rolling Stones or Smokey Robinson and the Miracles were having a good time. Even Eugenio, who’d long since stopped dancing regularly, came in, and, fortified with a few drinks himself, danced the mambo and the pachanga, though not nearly as well as his uncle or most of the others.

  After a while Cesar and his friends got used to the camera, but not to the fact that a woman was giving the orders. She was tall, with a great head of hair and fierce-looking, intelligent eyes. Frankie referred to her as “señorita jefe” and bowed with mock deference when she would pass condescendingly by.

  That night, the most touching dance couple on the floor turned out to be fat Cousin Pablito and his wife. Although he was only about five foot four, he cut a dashing figure in a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie. He and his wife never used to go out, but now, with their kids grown up, they were free. (Their two daughters had married, and their son, Miguel, had a good mechanic’s job and lived in the Bronx.) Pablito and his wife’s specialty was the pachanga and at one point during the evening the whole nightclub crowd surrounded them as they danced: when the camera fixed on them, Pablito really let loose, showing off every step he knew. In the end, even the hippie camera crew were touched and applauded, whistling and hooting, too.

  The opening turned out to be a grand success. Unbridled in their enthusiasm, the crowd danced and drank from nine in the evening until four-thirty in the morning. Even the sidewalk was jammed with people. It was as crowded as the sidewalk outside a funeral parlor during a wake, and as noisy, too. When the band inside wasn’t playing, the jukebox put the music of Beny More right out into the street. With their bellies full, heads woozy from booze, feet danced out, the customers left, happily promising the proud owner that they would return.

  And the filmmaker thanked the Mambo King for his help, too, and while the festivities were still going strong, she and her crew packed away their equipment into metal cases and went home.

  (And the film? The night’s work resulted in only ten minutes of footage that would be shown at a festival in the Whitney Museum, and included a brief interview with Cesar, who appeared with the caption “manager of the club” floating beneath him. Seated at the bar, with a big cigar in hand, and dapper in his suit, he was saying: “I came here with my younger brother in the late 1940s and we had a little band, the Mambo Kings. I composed with my brother a song, ‘Beautiful María of My Soul,’ and this caught the attention of the singer Desi Arnaz, who asked us to appear with him on his TV show I Love Lucy, do you know it?”

  And that ran in the film in a loop, jerking back to a point where he’s first saying, “. . . Desi Arnaz, who asked us to appear with him on his TV show I Love Lucy.” Jerked back, it showed about ten times in quick succession.

  Then it cut to the same kind of loop of Pablito dancing the pachanga with his wife, the same steps being repeated over and over again in a jerky manner. It was shown many times in the viewing room of the Whitney, and then later in France, where it won a prize.)

  Then, around five that morning, a Sunday, when most people’s thoughts were turning toward God and the Eucharist, Pérez bid everyone good night. At that point the opening party had dwindled down to Cesar, Pablito, Manny, Bernardito, and Frankie, who had manned the bar for the night. And there was Eugenio, twenty-one years old and attending college, who had worked in the kitchen. As Pérez left, he told them, “I have something for you. Just stick around for a few minutes.” And so they did, and for all their exhaustion and yawning, they were suddenly awake again as three comely young women in glittering silver-sequined miniskirts walked into the club, removed their garments, and started to dance.

  The club ended up doing its main business on Saturday nights. For the rest of the week, the Mambo King depended on the local beer drinkers and college students who would come in for his dinner specials. He also rented the club out for private parties, gave the space free to the local church for special cabaret nights, and on several occasions held fund-raisers. But Wednesday nights were reserved for jam sessions. Eating and drinking and paying cheap prices, the musicians who’d turn up at midnight used the Club Havana as a second home, jamming until four in the morning, just like the jam sessions Cesar used to attend at the little beach clubs near Havana. Sitting up on one of the high stools by the bar, cigar burning blue between his thick thumb and index finger, he smiled and nodded at his customers, applauded loudly for the young musicians who would take the stage. Over the years, the bright stage lights had sensitized his eyes, and so he always wore his green sunglasses. Behind the dark lenses, his eyes looked as if they were underwater, and though his jowlish face seemed languorously absorbed in the proceedings, he often drifted off into a reverie of songs that he might write, about love, women, family.

  From this club he earned a humble living. The late-night hours left him exhausted for his day’s work as superintendent. This exhaustion, the ache in his bones, the flutters in his stomach, the more lackadaisical rigging of his penis, made the Mambo King realize he was aging. Gray hair appeared in his sideburns (to which he applied Grecian Formula). The sharp pains in his gut, the acidity in his esophagus—hot in the throat of his dreams at night—and the dull, stony pains in his sides—symptoms of liver and kidney maladies—proliferated.

  In the name of the mambo, the rumba, and the cha-cha-cha of youth, he ignored all this.

  And still during this time he attended to his work in the building, though now he had the luxury of hiring friends to perform certain jobs for him. He paid Eugenio, who had washed out as a musician, to take care of things. For the first year of that club’s existence, it was Eugenio, down from his studies at City College, who’d turn up at tenants’ doors with a wrench and pair of pliers.

  DURING THIS TIME CESAR HAD A reputation as one of the Cubans in New York who would put up exile musicians in his apartment and help them find work. Every now and then, trumpeters and congueros, pianists, balladeers, and bolero singers, fresh from Cuba, would come to live in one of the Mambo King’s spare rooms. Before he had opened the club, he would try to find them jobs at anything in the neighborhood and through his connections: Pablo at the meat plant; Bernardito, who knew the printing and magazine business; and club and restaurant owners like Rudy López of the Tropic Sunset, or Violeta, who might need dishwashers or waiters. Finding music jobs was harder. Even if the Cuban population in New Jersey was growing and there were more jobs than before, there still weren’t enough to go around. So he’d let these Cubans stay with him, often lent them money and helped them find instruments in Harlem pawnshops. (Or he’d lend them one of his own.) He did so in the same spirit as he would help his own family. With the average stay being about a month, new faces were always turning up at his apartment.

  But one thing about having the club—Cesar could put people more easily to work, taking them on as waiters usually, or sending them into the back to wash dishes. Paid them out of his own pocket even when the club was dead. And he had some good musicians working with him. There had been Pascual Ramírez, a pianist, who was adamantly political and hated the revolution, the man pounding the tables when he’d get work
ed up about it. And then this other fellow, Ramón, who played the saxophone and spoke sincerely and hopefully about things changing in Cuba. (The poor man hanged himself in Miami in 1978.)

  Usually Cesar would just bring these visitors upstairs to meet the family, but between the club and the building, his days were long and full and he had little time to relax, to visit Delores and Pedro and the kids, to watch Delores adoringly whenever she walked across a room. If he worked until four in the afternoon, he was lucky to get an hour’s nap. Then, dressed, he’d make his way over to the Club Havana. Although he was often tired, he’d gotten used to the routine.

  One of those afternoons, while getting ready to go to work at the club, he received a long-distance telephone call from Miami, some fellow, a friend of a friend from Cuba, by the name of Rafael Sánchez, who told the Mambo King, “Me and my younger brother, Rico, we’re coming to New York and were wondering if you might be able to help us with a place to stay?”

  “Of course,” the Mambo King said.

  A week later, he found the two brothers, cane suitcases and black instrument cases, a trumpet’s and a saxophone’s, by their side, standing before his door.

  “Señor Castillo?” the older brother said. “I’m Rafael Sánchez and this is my brother, Rico.”

  The older brother was a slightly balding man of thirty, thirty-five, with a handsome face and a startled expression. He was wearing blue dungarees, a white shirt, a worn blue blazer, a black overcoat, and a black-brimmed, brown felt hat. Bowing, he shook hands with the Mambo King, as did his younger brother, Rico. He was about twenty-five and thin and gaunt, with a thick head of black hair and clear blue eyes. He wore dungarees and a dark sweater, an overcoat, and a wool cap on his head.

  “Come in,” the Mambo King said. “You must be hungry.”

  So they went down the hall to the kitchen, where he served the brothers steak sandwiches, French fried potatoes and onions, pasteles, and salad, drowned in oil and salt. They drank beer and beer and beer and played the radio, and Cesar stuck his head out the courtyard window and whistled to Delores, so she might come down and meet them. She came along with Leticia, who was now eighteen years old, quivery and fine like the flan they served the brothers.