AS THEY FEASTED ON A PLATTER OF MARISCOS Y ARROZ, WITH SOME chorizos—a paella—along with heaps of fried plantains, it was Nestor who did the talking at first. “Soy un campesino de Oriente,” he told her. “I’m a country boy from the east, from a quiet farm, tú sabes, near a little pueblo called Las Piñas, and I will tell you something, María. I was pretty happy growing up there amongst the oxen and pigs.” He was chewing on a delicate morsel and looking straight into her eyes. “Not to say that I don’t like Havana. I just miss my family y mi campo—my countryside. El aire puro—the pure air, el perfume de la jungla—the perfume of the woods.”
Por Dios, it was as if María were hearing herself speaking.
“I should have been a farmer, like mi papá, but I was just too sickly as a child. I wasn’t much good for anything when it came to the hard work in the fields. And because of mi enfermedad, I grew up holding on to my mother’s skirt. It wasn’t always easy, María. I practically never left that farm, and what learning I had, I owed to my older brother Cesar, who progressed as far as secondary school in Holguín. He taught me to read and write, and just about everything else I know.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin, refilled his glass with wine, took another bite, his expression uncertain.
“Cesar is everything to me, even if he can be a pain in the culo. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Surely not to Havana. He’s always been much more adventurous than myself. He’s a first-class músico and used to perform with many a conjunto out east, as a singer mainly, and because I was always the closest to him, the youngest—we are four—he took me under his wing and started me out playing different instruments and singing.”
“And he is much older than you?” María, watching Nestor intently, asked.
“Yes, by ten years, but that didn’t stop him from taking me around as a kid to all the pueblos and plantations where his charangas played. Sometimes we were away for days, and that created a problem with my papito, who didn’t want me to waste my time.” He shook his head. “He was always fighting with Cesar, and I was caught in the middle. But you know what? Once my hermano got me going with the music, well, what can I say? It gets in your blood, and there’s no stopping the desire. Do you understand?”
“I do, hombre,” María said. “My papito was a músico too.”
“No, me diga!” said Nestor excitedly. Gulping his wine, he asked, “Is your papito someone I would have heard of?”
“No, just a nobody I’m afraid, el pobre. He was never able to make much of a living at it, and, well”—she shrugged—“Papito did what he had to do to support us, until he couldn’t anymore.”
She looked so sad then, he had to say something. “Is he still alive?” Nestor asked.
“Oh, yes—he lives out in Pinar del Río.”
“Y tu mamá?”—“And your mother?”
She just shook her head.
Out of habit, at the very thought of her mamá, she made a sign of the cross, but quickly. And Nestor? Instead of rolling his eyes, the way Ignacio used to whenever she crossed herself while passing in front of a church entranceway, he sucked a slip of air through his beautiful lips and, shaking his head, said, “That life can be so sad is a tragedy, verdad?”
He went on, María listening. Mostly about how Cesar had first put him on a stage at the age of twelve, a skinny kid playing the trumpet with a band; how it was Cesar who persuaded him to come to Havana in the first place. “That was a few years back, and you know what, María? Since arriving, we’ve made four records, and not a single centavo; we’ve played in some clubs for a few pesos, but not much else. In fact, do you know how I make my money? As a waiter at a gentleman’s club—the Explorers’ Club—have you ever heard of it?”
“No.”
“It’s not far from the Capitolio. I spend my days there looking after its members, not a Cuban among them, bringing them drinks, their cigars, their meals, and tidying up after them. They are mainly Englishmen and Americans, some Germans too. I don’t particularly like it, and I don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time, but it’s a living, you know?”
“Oh, I do, hombre.”
“Well, when I get home I’m always happy to leave that job behind. To be honest, it’s a miracle that I’m even here sitting with you. See, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not your typical fulano.”
Gracias a Dios for that, María thought, nodding.
“Take my brother Cesar. He likes to go here and there and have a good time whenever he has the chance, but me? No, I’m not that way at all. Most of the time I don’t mind staying alone in our little solar at night, tranquilito, tranquilito, as long as it’s not too hot. Then I’ll stay out just to breathe. But,” he said, and he shook his head, “I don’t need the crowds, la locura of the clubs, not at all.”
She just listened, unable to stop staring at Nestor’s mouth and his elegant hands. “I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me, María, but I’m perfectly happy to sit at home with my guitar and trumpet, writing my little melodies and songs. Or sometimes, if there’s a good boxing match on the radio, I’ll listen to that; and if Cesar and me have a job, playing music somewhere, I’ll certainly try my best to put on a show for the audience. But at heart, María, I’ve always been un solitario, a solitary sort, for whom getting to know someone has never been easy, or even worth fussing over.”
He looked off just then, not at the fellow feeding coins into the jukebox, or at the other diners, happily eating their food, but towards the ocean, where the moon had risen, sighing, and the deepest melancholy suddenly emanated from his body like black threads that entangled themselves with María’s heart, María’s soul. To watch his expression in those moments was to witness an angel, fallen from heaven to earth, who, opening his eyes, saw mainly sadness around him.
“In fact, to be honest, María, sometimes when I’m alone and can’t bear to write another note, or a single lyric—they seem so useless to me—I get so homesick that I feel like getting on a bus for Las Piñas. Just the thought of having one of my mother’s plátano stews makes me happy, and then I start missing all the rest; the run of the farm, the harnessing of the oxen to the plow, hanging around with the guajiros. You know here in Havana I mostly play trumpet and sing, but out there, my favorite instrument is a guitar—it’s so easy to carry—and, you know, you can have a pretty nice evening with a bunch of folks, just strumming some chords and singing a few songs. And then, when you get back home, you just lie down under the mosquito netting looking at the stars through your window dreaming, without a worry in the world.” Then he sighed. “¡Qué bueno fue!”
He went on, telling María that he just didn’t know what he was going to do with himself in life. Lately Cesar had been talking a lot about ditching Havana for New York, where they had some cousins living in a neighborhood called Harlem.
“My brother’s been crazy about New York for as long as I can remember,” Nestor told her. “He went there when he was sixteen, working on a ship, and since then it’s been his dream to return, especially now. He thinks we’d have better luck as musicians up there.”
“Do you want to go?” María asked him.
“Me? Hell no! Just the idea of living in a city like that frightens me—I mean, I can barely speak a few words of English, as it is. Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Here, we have our guaguas and trolleys, but you know what I’ve heard, María? They have trains, hundreds of them, that go from one point in the city to another in underground tunnels. I don’t know if I would like that much—I just don’t like the darkness at all, if I’m not in the right mood, and as I told you, María, I’m not a very adventurous sort at all; in fact, I sometimes feel like a coward, un cobarde, when it comes to life—”
“But you weren’t a coward with Ignacio.”
That almost made him smile.
“And this Ignacio? What’s he to you?” he couldn’t help but ask.
“Oh”—she shrugged, as if he meant no
thing to her—“just someone who was once good to me.”
LATER, WHEN THAT SWEET MÚSICO ESCORTED HER HOME AND María had climbed up the stairs and begun to undress, she heard his trumpet from down below: first the melody and Nestor’s voice rising up into her window, Nestor improvising a song of love.
María, I don’t know you well, but I feel that love is in our destiny.
(His trumpet’s notes rising to the stars…)
Now I’m filled with the strongest desires.
(His trumpet’s notes flying towards the sea…)
Even if we’re practically strangers, I adore you already,
(His trumpet’s notes echoing against the walls…)
beyond all reason and without any doubt.
(His trumpet’s notes, so wonderful and filled with feeling, provoking, as well, a voice from another window: “Hey, you, Romeo! Cállate! Quiet down!”)
María, charmed by his little serenade, leaned out her window. “Nestor, but are you crazy?” she called to him.
“With you I am,” he called back, and he bowed like a gentleman. “When will I see you again?”
“Come back next Sunday, at noon,” she told him. “Maybe we’ll go to la playa. Está bien?”
“Okay!”
Then she sent him off into the world, Nestor, walking towards the arcades and turning every so often to see if she was still looking. While he headed home, in a state of pure joy, to the solar he shared with his older brother, María, examining herself as she rested in bed, touched her own dampness.
Chapter NINETEEN
That next Sunday found them on a trolley heading out to an amusement park, west of the city, El Coney, which had been nicknamed by the locals after its famous Brooklyn counterpart to the far north. For the occasion María had put on a sundress and wore a wide-brimmed hat and white-framed sunglasses; she carried a one-piece bathing suit in a bag. Nestor had brought along his own swimsuit and a notebook, which he proudly showed her.
“I always carry this with me, in case I get an idea for lyrics,” he said as they jostled along la Quinta Avenida towards las afueras of the city. “Because you never know when that might happen—you think you can remember a line the next day, but they’re like little dreams that go away unless you write them down. I always use what I call my special pencils. You see, María”—and he pulled one from his pocket that was practically worn to the nub—“I use only pencils that I have found on the sidewalk or on the street and other places; it’s as if I’m inheriting the ideas of the people who owned them. This one I picked up in front of the cathedral—probably belonged to a priest or a nun—and so when I’m writing with it, I feel that I’m getting a little help from Dios. But I also have a pencil that I found outside Ernesto Lecuona’s house in Vedado. I can’t prove that it fell out of his pocket, but just the idea of it gives me a different kind of inspiration. With that one, I write down my notes and the chords of songs.” He smiled. “My older brother Cesar thinks I’m eccentric for believing such things, but I figure, what’s the harm of it, if those notions help me make a beautiful song.” Then smiling, he added: “María, te parece una locura? Do you think that’s odd?”
“No,” María said. “Not if it makes you happy.”
But, my goodness, he was different from Ignacio.
“You think so?” And he flipped open his notebook, showing her a page filled with new lyrics. “I wrote this, thinking about seeing you again, just a few days ago. How do they read to you?”
She pretended to understand what he had written down. Though her lessons with Lázaro had slowly progressed, to the point that she had learned hundreds of words, she had yet to comprehend complete sentences, let alone the lyrics of a song; but it had to be about the majesty of love, though she couldn’t say for sure.
“Son bonitas,” she told him. “Muy, muy preciosas”—“They’re lovely and very, very fine.”
“And the sentiments? Do you feel they are possible?”
“Sí, cómo no,” she told him.
“Oh, but María, if you only knew how happy that makes me feel!”
So perhaps he was already writing about her, María would think years later. Perhaps those lyrics, which she couldn’t decipher, first opened his heart to the notion of their love. Perhaps, without intending to, she was already raising his hopes. What of it? She felt something for him, perhaps just gratitude for his kindness, and maybe a curiosity about his tender soul. What else could she have said without giving her ignorance away? In memory, that trolley floated along the laurel-and palm-lined streets of that avenue, the sea’s air so clear and without any sense of passing time—she was just nineteen after all!—and just like that they were walking along the promenade, too mutually shy even to dare hold hands, but feeling like they wanted to.
The amusement park, just about three blocks long and nestled between the Miramar Yacht Club and the white sands and cabanas of la Playa de Concha, enchanted her, for as a guajira from the countryside, she’d never visited such a place before. She had loved the carousel, whose enameled horses went circling up and down, and left María laughing at the sheer foolishness of adults, among so many children, riding such things. Then they got on La Montaña Rusa—the Russian Mountain—a mousy roller coaster that whipped along its rickety, curved tracks with abandon, María screaming and Nestor holding her tight. (This they rode three times, Nestor feeling the weight of her breasts against his knuckles, María laughing in a way she never could with Ignacio, Nestor growing somewhat nauseated over the motion but not willing to let María go.) They played games of chance. They ate ice cream, sharing their cones like children. Later, as they were standing on the causeway, watching these adventurous and perhaps crazy fellows jumping off a diving board into the sea from atop a three-story-high replica of a Coca-Cola bottle of painted cement, Nestor first took hold of her hand, and she didn’t resist.
Then, because it was such a beautiful day, they headed into the public restrooms, the floors covered with sand, to change. Shortly, out on the beach, María first saw the glory of Nestor’s graceful physique—his broad shoulders and flat belly, the curling hair that flourished upwards from his navel like hands in prayer over his chest—while he, in turn, along with about every other man on the beach, felt like weeping at the sight of her spectacular dancer’s body. In a green bathing suit, she had followed Nestor into the water, the two of them drifting out and splashing in the waves, oblivious to the people around them, when, out of nowhere, God threw them together. Or to put it differently, hit by a wave, she tumbled into Nestor’s arms, and for a moment their warm bodies pressed together, and just like that Nestor lifted her up as if he were about to carry her across a threshold, and then, while holding her, his hand grazed the lower front of her bathing suit and then slipped back so that she could feel his palm against her right nalgita. When he dropped her into the water and she stood up, her dark and curly hair now slickened and falling straight and sparkling over her shoulders, through her bathing suit’s modesty pad bubbles came seeping and popping out, and what surely made his heart beat faster, through the top of her suit jutted her stiffened nipples. Was she embarrassed or ashamed? No: what she felt was that she wanted more of that sweet man.
Soon they were embracing, and that was a mistake, or perhaps it was utterly natural, but once their bodies were touching, she started to feel within his trunks the kind of earthly response that made María gasp. And while part of her wanted to pull away, María, the same more or less pious mujercita who had been at Mass that very morning, let Nestor press even more deeply against her luscious center. The sensation was so pleasurable, and of an intensity she had never felt with Ignacio, that something unraveled inside of her. She forgot the nightclubs, the saintly gazes of church statuary, the very fact that they were only thirty yards or so from a crowded beach. Why she took hold of him through his suit, she could not say. (Here’s something else: sitting with her daughter and watching television, a rerun of Zorro with Tyrone Power playing the hero, pero en e
spañol, she’d recall to herself her first impressions of its weight and thickness and how it made her feel, if nothing else, that this hombre, Nestor Castillo, was muy, muy virile y fuerte.) And, God forgive her, the sight of his excited pene, distorted by the amplifying effects of the water, so agitated María that she, floating out of herself, couldn’t help but put her hand inside his trunks.
His face became a mask of pleasure and death at the same time, or, to put it differently, the tenderness in his eyes became overwhelmed by desire.
Okay, in retrospect, perhaps this was an exaggeration; it had happened so long ago that the pieces of that day came to her like snippets of vaguely remembered music; after so many years she couldn’t even recall the timbre of his speaking voice, save that it was mild and gentle, a real tragedy because just hearing him somehow calmed her. One thing was certain: coming out of that water, they were in a state of mutual excitement. It would have been so easy for them to slip into one of the cabanas, which lots of young couples did in those days, to ease off their swimsuits and, in the confines of one of those narrow tents, make furious, hurried love…. But, as Maria believed, the heavens were watching—or someone was—maybe her late mamá, Concha, or poor Jesus himself, with the bloodied tears of His sacrifice dripping down his face instead of tears of pleasure, of sea salt and kisses and youthful love, and that thought so rattled María she had to fight herself, for as they, timidly holding hands, waded to shore through that tepid water—so clear she saw mollusks breathing through the bottom sand—all she wanted to do was to fall back into his arms so that Nestor could cover her body with kisses.
Later, after they’d showered and dressed, Nestor suggested they get a bite to eat at the dance club Panchín, which wasn’t too far away. And because that wonderful singer Ignacio Villa, aka “Bola de Nieve,” the raspy-voiced Maurice Chevalier of Cuban crooners, sometimes performed there, Nestor thought they might catch his act afterwards. María, however, just wasn’t interested in visiting any cabaret, no matter how famous the singer. Her many nights in clubs were already enough to last her a lifetime. No, she preferred to sit out in the open air on the patio of a nearby fried seafood place, nothing special at all, taking in the sunset. As for music? It was relaxing to hear the boleros that played from a radio in the back, to drink enough beers to make her almost forget about Ignacio and lose herself in Nestor’s tender eyes. The longer they sat and the more they drank—his side of the table had five empty bottles of beer already sitting there, while hers had two—the more Nestor drifted off into a mood of such sadness that, as he opened yet another bottle, she wanted to wrest it from his hands.
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