Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

They were only a few blocks from the harbor walk, the Malecón, and because he could have cared less about going home and because María after a night of performances stayed up for hours, she didn’t mind accompanying him there. It usually took her an hour to stroll back to la Cucaracha, and the moon, with a sad, pocked face that always seemed to be watching, had lit up the ocean, a tranquil sight to take in.

“So, María, some parts inside of me-how can I put it-have been asleep for a long time. Fundamentally”-Pero, carajo, he used big words-“I haven’t had much interest in women. Not that I don’t notice, but mi deseo, my desire…for love has vanished.” And he tapped at his heart. “María, don’t you understand? I’ve been a dead man inside.”

Then he grew silent, a somberness overcoming him as if he had been embarrassed by his admission. On that night, automobile head beams flared along the grand curving roadway, a hundred residences and hotels, all aglow, their windows burning with light. It wasn’t until they could see the Morro castle in the distance that he came around again, with a simple question: “Just where is it that you live?” And when she told him that she had been staying at the Residencia Cubana, he could only shake his head. “I know of that place-isn’t it a disgrace?”

“Perhaps,” she answered him, feeling vaguely offended. “But it’s been my only home in Havana. I have my friends there, and the señora who runs it is very good to me.”

“But surely you must know what goes on there?” And when she looked away, he quickly added, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Along the way, a police cruiser had slowed up and pulled alongside them. Usually when that happened to María at night, she’d feel terrified of being forced inside-who knew where she might end up? Or what might be expected of her?-the prostitutes were always telling her stories. So she felt relieved when Ignacio, approaching the cruiser, a green Oldsmobile, seemed to know the officer. As he bent by the window, he and the policeman spoke, about what she could not say. She had walked over to the seawall, looking out over the bay and wondering how the gulf waters, which appeared to be so majestic, could smell so bad; at the same time, while she was taking in the immensity of that horizon’s expanse, which seemed to go on forever, a queasiness overwhelmed her, as if she feared that it would swallow her whole if she lingered too long. There was something else: as that cruiser took off, Ignacio rapping on its hood in a familiar manner, the policeman, with his visor cocked slyly down, smiled, nodded, and, as it happened, winked at María in an insinuating way that she found unnerving.

It simply offended her-I am not one of them, she thought-and now it was María who became sullen, so sullen that, once they reached the entrance to la Cucaracha, she could hardly wait to get upstairs. Though he mentioned an all-night cafeteria on Obispo where they could go for a while, she told him that if she didn’t soak her feet soon in a pan of salts, she’d suffer the next day.

“Bueno, do as you like,” he told her, though with a slightly wounded look on his face. And then, in a most courtly manner, he bowed. The last she saw of him that night, he was making his way into that quarter and had pulled out of his jacket pocket that book, that mysterious thing in which he took his solace.

Years later, while having lunch in one of those tacky South Beach sidewalk restaurants, all María had really told her daughter about the way she met this Ignacio-it could have been on one of many afternoons when mother and daughter, taking taxis, got slightly sloshed (Teresa, as usual, being a doctor, reminding María to go easy on those margaritas because of the salt) and María, with her own kind of dignity and pride, tended to give, depending on her mood, different versions of the same tale-was that she had first encountered Ignacio, “a very intelligent, hardworking man,” in a club she had been dancing in; and that he was very kind to her at first, a gentleman through and through, at least until he changed into someone she didn’t recognize. But before that they’d had a good enough time.

Weeks went by before María heard from him again, and though she had thought about Ignacio now and then, she could really have cared less. One evening, however, when she had arrived at work, there awaited María a bouquet of roses and, with them, a note. Since she couldn’t understand it, and felt ashamed to admit her shortcomings to the girls in her troupe, she had to wait until she got home for Señora Matilda to read it aloud to her:

My dear María,

I haven’t forgotten you and will see you soon at the club.

Ignacio.

That next night, swathed in gossamer, while vaulting across the stage in the midst of a solo, her hips in a deep swivel as if she were trying to wipe a table clean or wash a window with her papaya-that’s how she once explained the motion to her daughter, a wallflower when it came to dance-María, spotting Ignacio sitting at a table, dedicated her performance only to him. He knew it, watching her every move onstage and standing during the applause.

Later, it was María, sitting by his table, who told him about herself: at the heart of it was this: she was just a country girl from Pinar del Río and wouldn’t mind it all if she met a sincere man, honest and of good character, whom she could trust and be good to. And when he had heard her out, Ignacio, smiling, took hold of her hand, and told her, “It is my hope, María, to be everything for you.”

And he seemed to mean what he said, for soon they were going out on María’s nights off, heading here and there around Havana. She loved to take in a movie at the Payret theater, where between the shows singers and comedians entertained the crowds, and more than once they’d go into the kinds of hotels that she used to pass by and find so intimidating: like the Biltmore-Sevilla and the Astor-Havana, in whose fancy restaurants they dined, as well as his favorite bistro, Delmonico’s. Everywhere they went waiters and concierges attended to them with the utmost politeness and respect-it seemed that this Ignacio was an important man-and because he liked the way she looked alongside him, they would sit in the outdoor cafés. Ignacio, in his largesse, set up an account for her at El Encanto, Havana’s premier department store, so that she could buy whatever items of apparel she liked, and indeed, taking her around, he thought that a little jewelry would look nice on her, and soon enough that jewel of Havana went out into the streets wearing pearls around her neck, and gem earrings, for which she’d had her earlobes pierced. When she complained of a bothersome ache in her teeth, he paid for her to visit a dentist, who, falling in love with María, could barely bring himself to drill away the cavities that even the most beautiful of women suffer. Going off on trips, Ignacio saw to it that a florist deliver a weekly bouquet to the club-all the girls buzzing with excitement and jumping, quite easily, to the conclusion that she had become Ignacio’s mistress.

Indeed, he took more than just a little interest in her. It was on a Sunday that he had turned up at la Cucaracha out of the blue-she thought he was away-and told her, taking a look around, that the place made him sick to his stomach, and that he would find her another. But did she really want to go? She had gotten attached to la señora and knew most of the shopkeepers along that street, and most of the other prostitutes besides Violeta, even the two she found out had pee-pees like men. And while she surely would have liked to live in a nicer place, she had made that forlorn room, her first home in Havana, comfortable enough and knew that she’d miss the daily life there, the way her neighbors cooked their meals on pans on their balconies, the caged birds, the barking dogs, the guitar players and drunken singers (Ay, papito!), the crying babies, and even the Peeping Tom across the way-they made her feel anything but alone.