The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  “Mr. Arnaz?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Eugenio Castillo.”

  “Ah, Eugenio Castillo, Nestor’s son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice to hear from you, and where are you calling from?”

  “From Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles? What brings you out here?”

  “Just a vacation.”

  “Well then, if you are so close by, you must come to visit me.”

  “Yes?”

  “Of course. Can you come out tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come. In the late afternoon. I’ll be waiting to see you.”

  It had taken me a long time to finally work up the nerve to call Desi Arnaz. About a year ago, when I had written to him about my uncle, he was kind enough to send his condolences and ended that letter with an invitation to his home. When I finally decided to take him up on his offer and flew to Los Angeles, where I stayed in a motel near the airport, I had wanted to call him every day for two weeks. But I was afraid that his kindness would turn into air, like so many other things in this life, or that he would be different from what I had imagined. Or he would be cruel or disinterested, or simply not really concerned about visitors like me. Instead, I drank beer by the motel swimming pool and passed my days watching jet planes crossing the sky. Then I made the acquaintance of one of the blondes by the pool, and she seemed to have a soft spot for guys like me, and we fell desperately in love for a week. Then ended things badly. But one afternoon, a few days later, while I was resting in bed and looking through my father’s old book, Forward America!, just the contact of my thumb touching the very pages that he—and my uncle—had once turned (the spaces in all the little letters were looking at me like sad eyes) motivated me to pick up the telephone. Once I’d arranged the visit, my next problem was to get out to Belmont. On the map, it was about thirty miles north of San Diego along the coast, but I didn’t drive. So I ended up on a bus that got me into Belmont around three in the afternoon. Then I took a cab and soon found myself standing before the entranceway to Desi Arnaz’s estate.

  A stone wall covered with bougainvillea, like the flower-covered walls of Cuba, and flowers everywhere. Inside the gate, a walkway to the large pink ranch-style house with a tin roof, a garden, a patio, and a swimming pool. Arched doorways and shuttered windows. Iron balconies on the second floor. And there was a front garden where hibiscus, chrysanthemums, and roses grew. Somehow I had expected to hear the I Love Lucy theme, but that place, outside of birdsong, the rustling of trees, and the sound of water running in a fountain, was utterly tranquil. Birds chirping everywhere, and a gardener in blue coveralls standing in the entranceway of the house, looking over the mail spread out on a table. He was a white-haired, slightly stooped man, thick around the middle, with a jowly face, a bundle of letters in one hand, a cigar in the other.

  As I approached him, saying, “Hello?” he turned around, extended his hand, and said, “Desi Arnaz.”

  When I shook his hand, I could feel his callused palms. His hands were mottled with age spots, his fingers nicotine-stained, and the face that had charmed millions looked much older, but when he smiled, the young Arnaz’s face revealed itself.

  Immediately he said, “Ah, but you must be hungry. Would you like a sandwich? Or a steak?” Then: “Come with me.”

  I followed Desi Arnaz down his hallway. On the walls, framed photographs of Arnaz with just about every major movie star and musician, from John Wayne to Xavier Cugat. And then there was a nice hand-colored glamour-girl photograph of Lucille Ball from when she was a model in the 1930s. Above a cabinet filled with old books, a framed map of Cuba, circa 1952, with more photographs. Among them that photograph of Cesar, Desi, and Nestor.

  Then this, in a frame: I come here because I do not know when the Master will return. I pray because I do not know when the Master will want me to pray. I look into the light of heaven because I do not know when the Master will take the light away.

  “I’m retired these days,” Mr. Arnaz said, leading me through the house. “Sometimes I’ll do a little television show, like Merv Griffin, but I mainly like to spend my time with my children or in my garden.”

  When we had passed out of the house through another arched doorway, we reached a patio that looked out over Arnaz’s trees and terraced gardens. There were pear, apricot, and orange trees everywhere, a pond in which floated water lilies. Pinks and yellows and brilliant reds coming out of the ground and clustered in bushes. And beyond all this, the Pacific Ocean.

  “. . . But I can’t complain. I love my flowers and little plants.”

  He rang a bell and a Mexican woman came out of the house.

  “Make some sandwiches and bring us some beer. Dos Equis, huh?”

  Bowing, the maid backed out through a doorway.

  “So, what can I do for you, my boy? What is it that you have there?”

  “I brought something for you.”

  They were just some of my uncle’s and father’s records from back when, Mambo King recordings. There were five of them, just some old 78s and a 33, “The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love.” Looking over the first of the records, he sucked in air through his teeth fiercely. On the cover of that record my father and uncle were posed together, playing a drum and blowing a trumpet for a pretty woman in a tight dress. Putting that aside, and nodding, he looked at the others.

  “Your father and uncle. They were good fellows.” And: “Good songwriters.”

  And he started to sing “Beautiful María of My Soul,” and although he couldn’t remember all the words, he filled in the missing phrases with humming.

  “A good song filled with emotion and affection.”

  Then he looked over the others. “Are you selling these?”

  “No, because I want to give them to you.”

  “Why, thank you, my boy.”

  The maid brought in our sandwiches, nice thick roast beef, lettuce, and tomato, and mustard, on rye bread, and the beers. We ate quietly. Every now and then, Arnaz would look up at me through heavy-lidded eyes and smile.

  “You know, hombre,” Arnaz said, chewing. “I wish there was something I could do for you.” Then: “The saddest thing in life is when someone dies, don’t you think, chico?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, do you like California?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful. I chose this climate here because it reminds me of Cuba. Here grow many of the same plants and flowers. You know, me and your father and uncle came from the same province, Oriente. I haven’t been back there in over twenty years. Could you have imagined what Fidel would have made of Desi Arnaz going back to Cuba? Have you ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s a shame. It’s a little like this.” He stretched and yawned.

  “Tell you what we’ll do, boy. We’ll set you up in the guest room, and then I’ll show you around. Do you ride horses?”

  “No.”

  “A shame.” He winced, straightening up his back. “Do me a favor, boy, and give me a hand up.”

  Arnaz reached out and I pulled him to his feet.

  “Come on, I’ll show you my different gardens.”

  Beyond the patio, down a few steps, was another stairway, and that led to another patio, bounded by a wall. A thick scent of flowers in the air.

  “This garden is modeled after one of my favorite little plazas in Santiago. You came across it on your way to the harbor. I used to take my girls there.” And he winked. “Those days are long gone.

  “And from this placita you could see all of Santiago Bay. At sunset the sky burned red, and that’s when, if you were lucky, you might steal a kiss. Or make like Cuban Pete. That’s one of the songs that made me famous.”

  Nostalgically, Arnaz sang, “My name is Cuban Pete, I’m the King of the Rumba Beat!”

  Then we both stood for a moment looking at how the Pacific seemed to go on forever and fore
ver.

  “One day, all this will either be gone or it will last forever. Which do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “The afterlife. I believe in it. You?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe there’s nothing. But I can remember when life felt like it would last forever. You’re a young man, you wouldn’t understand. You know what was beautiful, boy? When I was little and my mother would hold me in her arms.”

  I wanted to fall on my knees and beg him to save me. I wanted to hold him tight and hear him say, “I love you,” just so I could show Arnaz that I really did appreciate love and just didn’t throw it back into people’s faces. Instead, I followed him back into the house.

  “Now I have to take care of some telephone calls. But make yourself at home. The bar’s over there.”

  Arnaz disappeared, and I walked over to the bar and fixed myself a drink. Through the big window, the brilliant blue California sky and the ocean.

  Sitting in Desi Arnaz’s living room, I remembered the episode of the I Love Lucy show in which my father and uncle had once appeared, except it now seemed to be playing itself out right before me. I blinked my eyes and my father and uncle were sitting on the couch opposite me. Then I heard the rattle of coffee cups and utensils and Lucille Ball walked into the living room. She then served the brothers their coffee.

  When I thought, Poppy, my father looked up at me and smiled sadly.

  “I’m so happy to see you again.”

  “And, son, I’m happy to see you.”

  My uncle smiled, too.

  That’s when Arnaz came in, but he wasn’t the white-haired gentleman with the jowlish face and kind, weary eyes who had led me around the grounds. It was the cocky, handsome Arnaz of youth.

  “Gee, fellows,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again. How are things down in Cuba?”

  And I couldn’t help myself. I walked over and sat on the couch and wrapped my arms around my father. Expected to find air, but hit on solid flesh. And his neck was warm. His expression pained and timid, like a hick off the boat. He was alive!

  “Poppy, but I’m glad to see you.”

  “It is the same for me, son. It will always be the same.”

  Embracing him, I started to feel myself falling through an endless space, my father’s heart. Not the heart of flesh and blood that had stopped beating, but this other heart filled with light and music, and I felt myself being pulled back into a world of pure affection, before torment, before loss, before awareness.

  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 that 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 in hand, bowed to the audience, and nodded when Ricky Ricardo faced the orchestra and, holding his thin conductor’s wand ready 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 big ball 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, repeated, “Let’s give them a nice hand, folks!” My uncle and my father bowed again and shook Arnaz’s hand and walked offstage, waving to the audience.

  Oh, love’s sadness,

  Why did you come to me?

  I was happy before you

  entered my heart.

  How can I hate you

  if I love you so?

  I can’t explain my torment,

  for I don’t know how to live

  without your love . . .

  What delicious pain

  love has brought to me

  in the form of a woman.

  My torment and ecstasy,

  María, my life. . . .

  Beautiful María of my soul,

  Why did she finally mistreat me so?

  Tell me, why is it that way?

  Why is it always so?

  María, my life,

  Beautiful María of my soul.

  And now I’m dreaming, my uncle’s heart swelling to the size of the satin heart on the I Love Lucy show, and floating free from his chest over the rooftops of La Salle, so enormous it can be seen for blocks and blocks. Cardinal Spellman has come to the parish to administer confirmation to the sixth-graders, and my friends and I are hanging out across the street, watching the hoopla, which has been announced in all the newspapers; limousines, reporters, clergy of every rank, from novitiates to bishops, crowded outside the church. And as they file into the church, I notice the enormous satin heart, and it makes me afraid, so I go into the church even when my friends, tough hoods in sleeveless black T-shirts, call me a little girl for doing it, and yet, when I’m inside, there’s no confirmation ceremony going on, it’s a funeral. A beautiful flower-covered coffin with brass curlicue handles is set out in the center aisle, and the Cardinal has just finished saying Mass and is giving his blessing. That’s when the organist starts to play, except, out of each key, instead of pipe-organ music, instead of Bach, what sounds is a mambo trumpet, a piano chord, a conga, and suddenly it’s as if there’s a whole mambo band in the choir stall, and when I look, there is a full-blown mambo orchestra straight out of 1952 playing a languid bolero, and yet I can hear the oceanic scratching, the way you do with old records. Then the place is very sad, as they start carrying out the coffin, and once it’s outside, another satin heart escapes, rising out of the wood, and goes higher and higher, expanding as it reaches toward the sky, floating away, behind the other.

  *And, behind that another recollection about the way the ladies dressed for those nights of love: they wore skull-hugging turbans, low-riding cloches, banded berets, and feath
ered pillbox caps. Heavy drop earrings made with fake rubies, crystals, and pearls; white creamy pearl necklaces hanging down into low-riding necklines, breasts plumped up and sweet underneath; sequined dresses with slit skirts and pleated midriffs, tied up by black sable belts. Frilly slips, step-ins, girdles and garters, brassieres, lacy-fringed and transparent at the nipples. Good for kisses on the belly, roll of the damp tongue on the navel, nose roving over a line of black pubic hairs below. Flower-crotched flame panties, black-seamed white panties, panties with felt-covered buttons, fluffy ball panties, panties whose waistbands snapped tight and left faint pink lines along the ridges of tender female skin; hips warm against his face; black sable panties, fake leopard-skin panties, butterfly-wing panties. (And if these ladies didn’t wear the right kinds of little things underneath, he would head into the lingerie department of stores like Macy’s and Gimbels, flirting with the salesgirls and happily looking over these little things in the display cases. Like a student preparing for an exam, he would squint and arch his handsome brow, checking out the names on the labels: Tropical Rhapsody, Bronze Twilight, Tigress, Nights of Desire.

  “Ohh la la,” he would say to the salesgirl, shaking his right hand as if his fingertips were on fire. “Which one would you wear, miss?”)

  *Puff of smoke, a swallow of whiskey, the sensation that something was pinching the small of his back, something with razorlike claws, making its way along the mysterious passages of his kidneys and liver . . . Pérez Prado. When the Mambo King, ensconced in his room in the Hotel Splendour, thought about Pérez, he recalled the first time he saw the man on a stage, off in another world and bending his body in a hundred shapes, as if he was made of rubber: prowling like a hound, on his haunches like a cat, spreading out like a tree, soaring like a biplane, rushing like a train, vibrating like a tumbling washing machine, rolling like dice, bounding like a kangaroo, bouncing like a spring, skipping like a stone . . . and his face a mask of concentration, conviction, and pure pleasure, a being from another world, his stage another world. Thin Pérez giving the Mambo King some of his jazzier stage moves, the loquacious and cheerful Pérez out by the bar, telling everyone around him, “Fellas, you must come and visit me in Mexico! We’ll have the time of our lives, tell you what, my friends. We’ll go to the races and the bullfights, we’ll eat like princes and drink like the Pope!”