Oscar Hijuelos - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

Privately, in her company, shut away from the rest of the world, he was content. But as soon as he stepped out into the street he became a different man. When other women walked by, he would look, his penis would get stiff in his trousers, and Luisa would know it. Quickening her pace, she would march off and leave him behind. His macho temperament never knew how to deal with this, and it would be days before loneliness and his affection for the family brought them back together again.

When he asked her to marry him, Luisa had her doubts, but fearing old-maidhood, and because Julián had sworn by Cesar, she said yes. This was in 1943 and they went to live in a small apartment in Santiago (another beautiful memory: their little home on a cobblestone street, sunny from morning until night and busy with merchants and children). When he brought her home to the family in Las Piñas, his mother, María, liked her very much, and so did Nestor: everyone, including the irascible Pedro, treated her civilly.

What happened? He did as he pleased. It took about a year for the elation of joining García’s family to wear off. The Mambo King found himself sitting at these meals in García’s house, daydreaming about some of the women he had seen on the streets. He even behaved in an annoyed fashion at García’s, because García had placed at his feet a woman who seemed to weep if you offended her! Because she knew well her uncle’s schedule in advance, it became difficult for Cesar to disappear for two or three days at a time, and this bothered him. So he developed the excuse of returning home to Las Piñas, where he would hole up with some country girl, resentful and angry over his situation. He would return from these sojourns maintaining a silence for a week at a time. He would walk through rooms muttering phrases like “Why have I allowed myself to become a captive,” and “What am I doing with my youth,” in clear earshot of Luisa. For a long time she did what she could to make him feel better… She would beg him to come around, and he would leave the house, her question “Why are you so cruel to me?” circling his head like a summer mosquito.

One day in 1944, Luisa happily told Cesar that she was pregnant, as if the birth of a child later that year would shore up their crumbling marriage. They would turn up at Julián’s house for weekly meals, and as a family they seemed content. But then one night Julián, who was not made of sawdust and had heard about and seen the way this crooner was treating his niece, called Cesar out onto his balcony and as he looked into the distance over Santiago Bay said, “I feel very close to you, my boy, but no matter what, I expect you to treat my family with respect. And I’ll tell you now, if you don’t like what I’m saying, señor, you can walk out the door.”

His sternness depressed Cesar. The man had been sick for a time with poor breathing and edema of the limbs and he was no longer playing much piano with the orchestra and preferred to conduct, halfheartedly waving a baton, from a chair. The man could hardly walk across a room (as the Mambo King could not now). It was as if Julián’s huge weight had crushed his lungs, his breathing was labored and he had trouble moving. And so the future Mambo King blamed Julián’s ill health for his temper.

“What you hear isn’t true, Julián. I love Luisa with all my heart, I would never want things to go badly for her.”

Julián rapped him on the shoulder and hugged him in his friendly way and his anger seemed to subside. This brush with him turned the Mambo King into a better husband for a time and he and Luisa passed through a period of happiness that revolved around a picture of future domestic bliss, with Cesar as dutiful bandleader-crooner-husband, and his wife and child(ren) waiting happily and lovingly at home for him. Yet, when he conceived of this tranquil scene, he saw himself pushing open the door of that house with a hard kick, the way his Papi used to; he saw himself shouting and angry and slapping his child’s face as he had been slapped, saw himself pacing in circles and cursing everyone around him, as did his father. He had thought that marrying into Julián’s family would inspire a mundane, normal happiness in him, but now he found himself regretting the whole business again. Not because he didn’t love Luisa, but because he felt that abuse and discontent boiled in his blood and he did not want to hurt her…

And the pregnancy which made the act of love a too-delicate operation also troubled him. (Here he remembers the first time he made love to her. Her skin was white and her hips bony and her triangle of pubic hair wet at its center because of all their kisses. He was not a heavy man then, but he was twice as thick as she and he undid her virginity in one spurting thrust which led, through the succession of days, to many other thrusts: they did it so much her hipbones and buttocks were covered with black-and-blue marks and his thing, which never failed to rise, finally fainted dead away at three o’clock one Sunday afternoon, due to heat and exhaustion. But when he was in love with her, he loved the Luisa who was the key to her Uncle Julián García, the thin, pensive Luisa who was there for his pleasure and who never expected anything from him.) He found himself restless, spending many nights with the whores of those small towns. Luisa knew, she could smell these women on his skin, in his hair, she could tell by the sated sleepiness and the blueness that ringed his eyes.

“Why are you so cruel to me?” she’d ask him again and again.

(And this cruelty, I didn’t want things to be that way, I was just being a man and doing as I saw fit, Luisa, but you didn’t know, didn’t know my restlessness and my disbelief in such simple things as a tranquil married life, you couldn’t see how it all struck me as a final trick, that enslavement and humiliation perhaps awaited me. The situation was already turning your Uncle Julián away from me, he’d used to look at me with pure love. So I was led around by my penis, so what? What did a few laughs, a few fucks with women I’d never see again, have to do with anything, especially our love? Why did you have to take it so badly? Why did you have to weep and then shout at me?)

That was when he really started to drink. One night he drank enough rum at Julián’s to feel as if he were floating down a river. When he stumbled out of the house, two of his fellow musicians were sent out to help him down the stairs. Of course, he pushed them away, repeating, “I don’t need anybody,” and slipped down two flights, conking his head.

He woke to an idea: going to Havana.

Away, away, away from all this was how Cesar saw it. He had many reasons for moving to Havana: that was the place to be in Cuba if you were a musician. But he also believed that he could resolve things with Luisa in Havana, and at the same time, away from her family, he could do as he pleased. Besides, he was twenty-seven years old and wanted to work in an orchestra where he might perform some original songs. He and Nestor had been writing boleros and ballads for a long time and had never performed them with Julián García. In Havana, they might be able to put something together. What else could he do, remain with Julián and play the same dance halls for the rest of his life?

In any case, things with Julián’s orchestra had changed. Julián was so ill that he spent most of his days in bed. One of his sons, Rudolfo, took over as orchestra leader and wanted to teach Cesar a lesson in humility for treating his cousin so badly, relegating him to the trumpet section, alongside his brother Nestor, who had recently joined the band. This lesson just intensified his resolve to leave the orchestra, and in 1945 he took his wife and baby to Havana.

They had been in Havana for two months, living in a solar in the inexpensive section of La Marina, when word came that García had died. With Julián gone, the Mambo King felt like a prince who had abruptly come out from under a spell. By the time they returned with their baby from Oriente after the funeral, he had no stomach left for the matrimonial bond. (Now you must see him at a party in Manhattan circa 1949 with his right hand slung across his heart, the other held up high as if doing the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, sweat pouring off his forehead, hips shaking, a drink in hand, happy, happy.)