Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

No, she was not about to become one of those young girls who happen to lie down for money with men. It would have been easy enough to find takers, for she had already been stirring the male juices for a long time in that city, and the expression on María’s nearly ecstatic face as she danced left men seriously fatigued with desire. She’d already received half a dozen marriage proposals from men on her street, a barber and a shoe repairman among them, and a few louts without jobs-maybe they were numbers runners for the races out at the dog track-with nothing more to offer her than the shirts on their backs. A few of her potential courters were wily neighbors at the Hotel Cucaracha who sometimes waited half the night for her to come traipsing up the stairs; but just walking along the streets of Havana, at any hour of the day, she attracted men who’d follow her for blocks and frighten her with the suggestive remarks they’d make. And some, most gentlemanly sorts, in their fine linen suits, adopting a more polite demeanor, doffed their hats at her and, with the utmost politeness, asked if they might accompany her for a while, and other questions followed, along the lines of where she lived and worked. She hardly ever told them the truth, even if she sometimes felt terribly alone.

She so stood out on the streets of Havana that, on many a night, while leaving one club or another at four in the morning, she’d drape a veil or a mantilla over her face, haunting the darkened arcades and alleys through which she passed like a spirit, her high heels clicking against the cobblestones beneath her. In the light of day, however, there was no way of concealing herself-if only she could be more like those carefree cubanas she saw, proudly swaying their big kiss-me culos as they sashayed down the street. But the truth is that María could have been wearing a crown of thorns and dragging a cross behind her and she still would have attracted amorous attention. Strolling along the Malecón in her simple ruffle-skirted dress, she’d slow traffic, the drivers of trucks and automobiles, and even the Havana Police in their cruisers, pumping on their brakes to get a better look at her shapely gait. Bootblacks scrambled to give her shoes a free buffing. Old men did double takes, for that desire’s the last thing to go. So did the street sweepers, window washers, and those fellows who went from door to door with grindstones to sharpen household cutlery. Bicyclists tling-tlinged María. Fruit and produce vendors, selling their goods from carts and stands, refused to take her money or, when they did, never charged her the full amount, often sending María away with more mangoes, avocados, and garlic bulbs than she could possibly have use for. Florists gave her bouquets-chrysanthemums and roses and little bouquets of purple and white mariposas, the national flower of Cuba.

At the intersection of Compostela and O’Reilly, a blind beggar, Mercurio, standing by a newspaper kiosk, seemed to regain his sight whenever she happened to pass by, that sly negrito who sold pencils out of a jar and sang ballads for pennies breaking into a broad grin as if, indeed, through his pitch-black glasses he could see the shapeliness of María’s body inside her dress. And in his goatish white-haired madness, el Caballero de París, as he was known in Havana, a locally famous eccentric of Bohemian habits, wearing a beret and a heavy frock even in the heat of the day, followed her around as well, expounding poetry in praise of María as he strode beside her. Even priests and monsignors, striding solemnly out from one or other of Havana’s myriad churches, abandoned their vows of worldly indifference and, at the sight of María’s nalgitas as they bobbed inside her dress, kissed their scapulars, thanking God for his handiwork.

“Eres una maravilla”-“You are a wonder”-was the kind of thing she heard over and over again.

Her face, in some ways, must have seemed saintly. During her church visits to pray and dream, Havana Cathedral with its musty and timeless interior being a favorite refuge, María received endless (useless) blessings from priests, supplicants, and beggars alike. Now and then, someone in the plaza would make her the gift of a rosary or a vial of holy water or a prayer card-even a relic sometimes. And while she could not have been more polite or gracious, or more thankful for their gifts, María had stopped believing that such religious objects made any difference in this world.

Street urchins, traveling in packs, followed her, tugged at her skirt hems, danced by her feet, and harassed anyone else who looked at her. From their second-floor windows, old women, Spanish fans in hand, smiled, admiring her as well (María, after all, was their own past). As she was cutting through a cul-de-sac alley between apartment buildings, there was always some fellow, bored to death or horny, on his balcony to call down to María, asking, with a sly expression on his face, if she would like to have a drink or go dancing. On the majestic Prado, managers offered her free meals just for sitting by a table in their outdoor cafés. (At least María knew she never had to go hungry.)

Among the suave and easygoing cubanos she encountered daily, who flirted as a matter of basic decorum, it often amounted to a pleasant enough game, the very fact that María, wearing a sphinxlike mask, might occasionally crack a sonrisa, a smile, was enough to send these dandies and caballeros dancing happily off into their futures. Crude sorts, however, also abounded. In a market off Lamparilla, there was a carnicero, a butcher, she tried to avoid. Whenever she passed by his stall, which smelled of fresh-killed meat, he always gave her body an up and down. It didn’t matter if she was just trying to mind her own business. Winking, sucking air in through his teeth, he took delight in waving calves’ tongues, bulls’ testicles, and the biggest chorizos in his stall at her. And sometimes, if she were passing through a crowded marketplace, both disembodied hands and other parts pressed against her.

Worse, however, were the out-and-out obscene gestures that came her way, especially at night, as she went walking home. When the clubs had closed and even the bordellos of la Marina and Colón were winding down, there was always the chance that some borrachero, barely able to stand straight against an arcade column, might grab himself through his trousers, all the while boasting that he had a tremendous malanga awaiting her. (Some of those “caballeros” actually had a romantic gleam in their eyes-as if their ardor was akin to an expression of love, and as if María might actually fall to pieces and succumb to their masculine powers, the shits.) And you would be surprised by the number of times that such sorts of men, stepping towards María from the shadows, actually pulled their stiff pingas out to show her-oh, how María wished she had that butcher’s cleaver with which to cut those chorizos off, may God forgive her for such unkindly thoughts.

On those occasions-twice with the same degenerate whose appendage, enhanced by the glowing penumbra cast by the arcade’s light, seemed shockingly large-she spat and cursed such filthy-minded louses-the chusmas-for not leaving her alone; then she’d march stoically on. And each time she did, María felt her kindly guajira soul hardening a little more, her skin growing thicker, and her patience for the vicissitudes of men wearing thin.

Putting up with a lot, María could have used someone to look after her. And that feeling just grew stronger as time went on. Missing her valle, she sometimes spent her evenings off from the clubs in that hallway with la señora, with her slight urine smell, listening to anything on the radio, so long as she wouldn’t have to sit in her room alone. She dreaded the prospect of sleep-she’d twist and turn thinking about her dead sister and the look of horror on her face when she gave her a beating, kept imagining her drowning in that pool beneath the cascades. She’d get down on her knees to beg Teresita’s spirit for her forgiveness, but no matter what, no sooner did she finally get under the covers of her chinche-ridden bed, hoping for pleasant dreams, than she began to fill with a terrible apprehension that shot through her body like electricity; she’d sit up, trembling, and out of habit, and a feeble hope, she’d pray. And when that didn’t work, though she knew it was a sin, she’d reach between her legs, her fingers dampened by her tongue, fondling herself until, writhing and churning her hips into her own hand’s motion, she lifted out of her own history into the momentary oblivion of pleasure, breaking into pieces. And then, of course, she’d slip back into the gloom of guilt, even more deeply than before. But that was María.