Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

In any event, she was working as a dancer in a new revue-that’s what the professionals called it-at the Club Nocturne, in Vedado, where, one night, fed up with her loneliness, she first met the man who, years later, was to become her daughter, Teresa’s, father.

She’d noticed him coming into the club a few times before: he was older, somewhere on the far side of his thirties, had a pock-marked face, clear gray eyes, and a pencil-line mustache. He comported himself with authority, hardly ever looked up at anything, not even at the floor show, and always seemed involved with going over a ledger book, or some volume that he was reading. He always dressed nicely in a white silk suit, wore a lavender cologne, or was it lilac scented? The sort to drink only the best stuff, he ordered the same meal of fried pork chops with onions and papas fritas without fail, then smoked cigar after cigar until some late hour, when, as quietly as he’d come in, he would leave. A man of regular routines, without any interest in wasting his money in an adjoining casino room, where there were gaming tables and a roulette wheel, he seemed almost indifferent to that place-why he went there she didn’t know, nor, in fact, did María particularly care.

That she met him at all was a matter of pure chance. Since part of María’s job was to keep company with the club’s patrons between shows-all the girls had to-she had the misfortune of finding herself at a table with a group of drunk Americans who were beside themselves over the fact that María happened to be wearing so little-just a glittery bandeau and a silvery, tasseled pantalette under a diaphanous chemise. And because the unspoken assumption, the myth (sometimes the truth) had it that such women were often very willing to moonlight as prostitutes, one of these men, a burly fellow, muttering all kinds of drivel she couldn’t understand, had taken the liberty of reaching over to fondle María’s leg under the table. As she, in a fit of pique, stood up to leave, the drunk took hold of her hand and pulled María onto his lap. Just then, before even the club bouncer, a bald black giant named Eliseo, could intercede, this man, Ignacio Fuentes, watching from his table, marched over and grabbed that drunkard’s forearm, forcing it from around María’s belly. Then, looking intently into the drunkard’s eyes and saying a few words in English, and before his friends could make more of a commotion, Ignacio opened his jacket and showed him something that drained the fellow’s ruddy face of color.

“Okay, okay,” the man said, holding up his hands. “I get it.”

“Good,” Ignacio said firmly. “Now apologize to the lady.”

The man mumbled his regrets-and Ignacio, in case María didn’t get the drift, translated: “He says he’s very sorry to have bothered you.” Then, as if his contempt for the fellow had turned to air, and to smooth over the situation, perhaps for the sake of María’s job, he called the waiter over, buying them a round of drinks: “Give those sinvergüenzas whatever they want.” Bowing cordially, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he headed back to his table, and María, who’d had that kind of thing happen to her before without anyone particularly caring, followed him.

They spoke for only a few minutes-she had another show to perform-but in that time, while thanking him, María had decided that this caballero, a gallant, wasn’t the usual sort who came into the club. Despite his macho demeanor, there was something fiercely intelligent about his eyes, intimidating and somehow reassuring at the same time. Perhaps he was a teacher, maybe a university professor, and a very lonely one, a soltero with a preference for that kind of place. But obviously he couldn’t be-how many maestros were so courageous, and for that matter carried inside their jackets the sort of something that so quickly quieted so unruly a man? What most intrigued her was what he wore on the thin gold chain around his neck: a crucifix, a medallion of the Virgin de Cobre, and a third symbol, which she supposed had something to do with los judíos: it was just like the Star of David hanging outside the synagogue on Santa Clara Street in the old city.

(“Oh, these two,” he would later tell her, “are for my faith, and the third I wear in case los judíos were right all along.”)

He didn’t really have too much to say to her: he seemed only obliquely aware of her lusciousness. It was as if her beauty meant nothing to him, which, in a way, she liked and despaired over at the same time. (Was it that he didn’t find her attractive?) Just before going backstage to change into her costume for the second show, an elaborate dance routine staged to the music of Moisés Simóns’ “Cubanacan,” she told him her name-“María…María García y Cifuentes”-and with that, he smiled for the first time. Though he had a few teeth missing, she found his appearance reassuring.

IT SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE TO FIND HIM WAITING FOR her on the street afterwards, at four in the morning, María in a raincoat and veil, Ignacio leaning against an alley wall across the way, casually smoking a cigar under the flickering glare of a misspelled neon sign-nigth clubnigth club. She’d come out with three other dancers, one of them, knowing María as a solitary sort (translation: a poor thing scared to death of the city), exhorting María to enjoy herself for a change. (Pero con cuidado, with caution.) So when he offered to accompany her for a while, she didn’t mind. That night, without even attempting to hold her hand or to pull her off into the shadows for a kiss, he seemed a gentlemanly sort, a real caballero, as if he’d never push her up against a wall and take advantage. (Deep down, at the same time, she wanted him to.) Calmly, Ignacio told her about himself: he was a businessman, un trabajador, who’d gotten a little lucky with a going import and export concern, mostly in appliances, based in the harbor. His negocio required that he travel now and then, not just across the island but sometimes to the States-“Tú sabes, pa’ América, y los ciudades de Miami y Nueva York”-but now that they were becoming acquainted, how could he look forward to leaving Havana?

“But, señor…”

“Call me Ignacio, please.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“What should I know?” he asked. “To be honest, María, before tonight, I’d hardly noticed you-not that I haven’t observed what a tremendous dancer you are-but I’m one of those fellows who believes there’s a reason why things happen a certain way. You know that drunkard who was bothering you? I’m almost grateful to him for what happened tonight.” He stopped on the corner of Calle 15 and began fingering the crucifix and the other medallions around his neck. “You see, María, soy viudo-I’m a widower, who once had a wife and una muchachita, a daughter. My wife’s name was Carmen, and she had family up in Tampa, and so I would send them off every so often to visit.” Then, a little sadly: “You remember the hurricane of ’forty-three?”

Of course she did, it was the same year that half their livestock drowned, the year that Teresita, so confused and lost, threw herself into the cascade’s waters.

“Their plane went down in that storm, and since then, well, how may I explain myself-I’ve hardly cared less about normal things. I do my work, I sometimes go out, but little else. I can hardly sleep at night thinking of what happened to them. Do you know that feeling?”

“Sí, señor, I do,” she said.

“That’s the reason I’m always reading. It keeps my mind on other things. That’s why I sit enjoying the company of others without really having to talk with anyone. I can do that in a club like the Nocturne, where the food is good, and, of course, the entertainment exceptional.”