Oscar Hijuelos - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

For two months they lived under the same roof in Havana. But, in that city with its exciting night life, he grew restless, and this restlessness took him back to the women he had here and there. He loved his daughter, never went out without bringing her a little gift, a doll, a bag of candies, a little hand mirror, anything he’d happen to see in the marketplace that she might like. He’d cover her face with kisses and rock her on his lap by the window overlooking the street. These moments of real tenderness sometimes inspired reconciliations, but as soon as Cesar spent any time with his wife, their struggles began again. By the end of those two months she was looking worn and exhausted, and he was impatient for solutions.

He moved out of their solar, and stayed with Nestor, who had gotten his own little place, seeing his wife only once a week, when he would faithfully give her half his pay from the Explorers’ Club and the band in which they played. It wasn’t that he didn’t care: when he saw her, he was polite and almost conciliatory. It was she who told him, “Never again.” He would bounce his daughter on his knees, carry her around the room, planting kisses on her face. For a time, he would meet other women and speak sadly of the loss of his little daughter. They divorced, through her family’s connections, and she ended up marrying someone else, from Havana.

Now as he sat in the Hotel Splendour his life with Luisa fluttered like a black moth through his heart. He felt a great sadness, recalling how in his youth he had never believed that love really existed — for him. But back then, while living in Havana and later strumming a guitar in Pablo’s living room in New York, he just told himself, “That’s life,” dismissing his sadness and bringing down a macho wall between himself and his feelings.

Snap of the fingers, just like that.

Toward the end, she had told him, “For someone who sings so many songs of love, you are cruel.”

“My little daughter, my precious loving daughter… Mariela.”

Sip of whiskey.

“Mariela… Luisa…”

At least he got a song out of it, he thought now—“Solitude of My Heart,” a bolero from 1949.

ONE DAY IN 1950, A YOUNG, pretty Latin woman was standing by a bus stop on 62nd Street and Madison Avenue. She was about twenty-one and wearing a raincoat and white tennis shoes. By her side, a shopping bag filled with soap, rags, a work dress, scarf, and duster. She was carefully reading a book, her lips barely moving, but moving just the same. She had been waiting for about fifteen minutes when she looked over and noticed the young, well-dressed man with a black instrument case by his side. He was watching the street for a bus and whistling to himself. He had quite a pensive manner, and even though he looked at her, and nodded politely, he seemed to be concentrating on the whistling of the tune, his brows creasing in creative fervor. She liked that, and even though she knew where the bus went, she said to him in Spanish, “Excuse me, does this bus go up to 125th Street?”

“Yes, this is the stop for that bus. It goes all the way up.”

They stood for a few minutes in silence, and then he asked her, “Are you Cuban? ¿Tú eres cubana?”

“Oh, yes, I am.”

“I knew it.” He looked her over, gave her a nice up-and-down.

“What do you do? Working?”

“Yes, I clean house for a rich man. He’s so rich he’s unhappy. You?”

“I’m a musician.”

“Ahhhh, I can tell just by looking at you that you’re a good musician. Have you had much luck?”

“Well, I have a little conjunto with my brother, my older brother. He’s the real singer in the family, but sometimes I do a few songs myself. We’re trying to get along, but it’s difficult. I mean, I have to work days in a warehouse.”

“I can tell that you’ll succeed at whatever you want.”

“Everybody says that, but who knows. What’s your name?”

“Delores Fuentes. And yours?”

“Nestor Castillo.”

She was so used to being around men who were happy and aggressive, and here was this musician, quiet, polite, and a little gloomy.

They rode up Madison Avenue together, sitting next to each other. He was jotting down the lyrics of a song on a piece of paper, and from time to time he’d whistle part of a melody, look out the window at the gray buildings, whistle again.

“Is that something you’re making up?”

“Yes, a bolero.”

“A love song, yes?”

“Something like that. Been working on it for a long time.”

“What are you going to call it?”

“‘Beautiful María of My Soul.’ Something like that.”

“And this María?”

He was somewhere else, though he looked her straight in the eyes.

“Just a name. Maybe I’ll write it using your name.”

They both got off at 125th Street. He was going to walk west toward Broadway and up the hill to La Salle Street, where, he’d explained, he lived with his brother. And she was going to catch the number 29 bus for the Bronx. Before he left her, he’d said, “Do you like to dance?”

“Oh, yes.”

“ Bueno , we’re playing this coming Friday night in Brooklyn. At a place called the Imperial Ballroom, have you heard of it? That’s on East 18th Street, off Utica Avenue, Brooklyn, one of the last stops on the number 4 line. I’ll write it down for you, okay?”

“Okay.”

It took her another hour to get home. When she made the long trips to and from the Bronx, she preferred buses over subways. She didn’t mind the long trip because she always carried a few books to read. That day she was halfway through a James M. Cain novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and she was also reading something called A Simpler English Grammar by a Hubert Orville which she studied diligently for her night-school English classes. She liked to read because it took her mind off her loneliness, gave her feelings of both solitude and companionship. She’d gone to work cleaning houses because she’d gotten tired of her job at the five-and-ten, a Woolworth’s up on Fordham Road, mainly because the manager was giving her a hard time with pinches and casual caresses. But that was her story with just about every man on the street. It seemed they were always trying to pick her up. She had an elegant face with large, pretty, and intelligent eyes, black hair that fell over her shoulders, and a curious and introspective expression which men read as lonely. Men chased her everywhere, tried to get hold of her. GIs, businessmen, young kids, college students, professorial types who would come into that Woolworth’s to buy pencils. Men trying to look down her cleavage whenever she bent over, men looking at her out of the corner of their eye while examining the quality of a fountain pen, looking into the slit of her blouse where the meat of her breasts met with the white cloth of her brassiere. Some men said, “Maybe we can go out tonight,” meaning, “Maybe I can fuck you tonight.”

She lived with her older sister, Ana María, who had come up from Cuba to keep her company after their father, with whom Delores lived, had died. Ana María was a live wire. She liked to go out dancing and on dates and was always trying to get Delores to go with her.

“Come on, let’s go dancing, have some fun!”

But she preferred to stay home and read. One of the nice things about her job cleaning houses for the rich people was that they always gave her books. The rich man who lived on 61st Street and Park always gave her some time off during the day to do as she pleased, saying that she could help herself to any of his books, and he had hundreds in massive shelves that rose up to his Florentine molded ceilings. She would sit happily by a window overlooking Park Avenue, eating rare-roast-beef sandwiches and salad for lunch, with a book open on her lap. She didn’t particularly care what she read, as long as the language was not too difficult, and she prided herself on reading at least two books a week. Not bad for the daughter of a barely literate man. And in English, too! Besides, the books took her mind off the terrors of the world and the sadnesses that ran madly through her heart. It was funny, she felt that same kind of sadness from the musician at the bus stop.