Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

As María passed the haunted entranceway of the Centro Gallego and came to a café called El Paraíso (the Paradise), she saw, as might be inevitable in a bolero of dejection-not “Beautiful María of My Soul” but some other like “Te odio” (“I Hate You”) by Félix Caignet-Ignacio sitting by a table beside a woman, and not just any woman, but the dancer Lola Sánchez. Ah yes, Lola, a light-skinned mulatta like María, her tar-baby black hair recently dyed platinum blond, her tetas half bursting out from the top of her dress, and whose skirt, slit up nearly to her hips, revealed thighs and legs that, in their musculature, María almost found herself admiring. And what else? Under the half-light of a Chinese lantern, Ignacio and this Lola Sánchez were locked in a fondling embrace, his mouth pressed against hers, his hand stuck deep inside her skirt. And in that instant, María, without knowing anything about Lola-other than that she sometimes gave interviews on the radio and headlined at the Sans Souci-suddenly despised her, and Ignacio as well. Who knows what possessed María, but when she marched over to their table, she couldn’t help but call out, “Hey you, shit!” And when Ignacio looked up at her, without recognizing María at first, her face was so distorted by anger, he wondered why that very lovely but crazy-looking young woman, esa encantadora loca, had just kicked over their table, platters of mariscos and cocktails toppling onto the pavement. Then it came to him. “María, what are you doing?”

With that Ignacio stood up and took hold of her by the wrists and tried to calm her down, but she just wouldn’t, María breaking from his grip, María cursing him with the kind of language her dead mother, in all her piety, would have found shocking. Which is to say, that beautiful María, sweet guajira from the sticks, dancer and head turner extraordinaire, had become angry at the sight of them in a way that even surprised herself.

She spent the remainder of that night tossing in her bed, suffering from nightmares of sin and humiliation. Incredulous that Ignacio would betray her in so public a fashion, María wished that she could have shat him down the retrete behind their shack in Pinar del Río, so that he might swim among his brothers, wished that he had been swallowed up by the cavern’s waters like her sister. Livid with pain and rage, María couldn’t have cared less if she ever saw that desgraciado again. Yet, in the solitude of her solar, amidst all the furniture and an armario filled with the dresses he had paid for, she slipped into a state of superstitious forlornness. For to be alone made her think about her dead mother and sister, Teresita, and when she thought about them in another world of shadows, María felt more desolate than ever before, tan solita, tan solita, as if the city bustling around her were nothing more than a necropolis through which she wandered.

Still, with the light of day, such dark thoughts thankfully left her; and she had her dancing at the club and those pleasant lessons with Lázaro to occupy her.

About a week later, at dusk, however, she had been sitting by her window studying her notebooks-ay, but so many words to learn-when Ignacio, not wanting to let a good thing go, came knocking at her door. What could she do but allow him inside-he had his own key anyway. And though he had pleaded that she forgive him, María, having her pride, told him to simply take what clothes he had been keeping in that place and go. A slick caballero (the pendejo) by any standard, Ignacio claimed that he loved her, his mood suddenly calmer, contrite.

“I know I’ve done some things to offend you, but with all my heart I’m asking you to forgive me. Please, María,” he said, and he crossed himself. “I am sincere in telling you this. Te juro. I mean it.”

“And that woman?”

“She’s nothing next to you.”

He tried to caress her, to kiss her lovely neck, but his breath reeked of rum, and the touch of that man, which at best she had found tolerable, seemed now repugnant. She threw open the door.

“Vete,” she told him. “I’d rather die than take another day of your joderías, do you understand?”

“I don’t believe you mean that.”

“Just leave me, Ignacio,” she told him. “No soy puta.”

Then, all at once, what tenderness he possessed deserted him. His brows knotted fiercely. “Not my whore? Want to know something? You aren’t even good at it.” His face burned red. “You know why I went off with that other one? It’s because she knows how to behave in the bedroom like a real woman. You may be beautiful and make a lot of noise, but you’re stiff as a cadaver-”

“That’s because you beat me, hombre…”

And then it turned into something else. When he tried to throw her on the bed, she ran screaming into the hallway, Ignacio chasing after her and shouting insults, the two of them spilling down the stairways of her edificio and making so much of a commotion that passersby along that market street began to gather, curious about yet another familial Havana melodrama, drenched in sweat and contorted faces, unfolding before them. A miserable scene that María would probably have preferred to forget, and would have forgotten, if not for the glory that shortly entered her life.

You see, it happened that a young musician with a most soulful expression and priestly demeanor had been walking home along that street. Wearing a white guayabera and linen slacks, and carrying a beat-up instrument case in hand, he had come upon the scene at the end of an afternoon of both music and dreams in a park on the western outskirts of the city, where along the banks of a river and under the shade of trees he, a trumpeter and singer, had played his heart out with the batá drummers and congueros of Marianao: his name was Nestor Castillo.

Fresh from a stirring tumbao, he could barely believe what he was seeing before him: not just a terrible squabble bursting out onto the street but a woman as beautiful as any he had ever encountered, her face contorted with pain and longing, a cubanita, her dress torn down the front, who instantly spoke to his soul. Just as Ignacio, his face twisted with anger, went lunging after María and chased her, sobbing, into the crowd, Nestor, perhaps possessed by a notion that music had a power of its own, or because he didn’t know what else to do, took out his trumpet and began playing a melody so serene and consoling that even the indignant, foul-tempered Ignacio stopped in his tracks. His fist had been raised as if he was about to hit María when, all at once, like everyone gathered in front of that building, Ignacio seemed to forget for a moment why he was there at all, his attentions turned to the sonorous music echoing against the walls.

“Caballero,” Nestor called out to him. “It’s done. Why don’t you leave the lady alone? Look, she’s only a woman, huh?”

“And who are you to tell me what to do?”

“I’m just a músico, my friend.”

With that Nestor lifted that trumpet to his lips again, another melody flowing forth, but this time, much as with love, the charm of it had worn off. Ignacio strode over to him and poked his trembling hand, his forefinger and index finger jamming into Nestor’s chest.

“Let me tell you something: I would mind my own business if I were you.” With that Ignacio, reeling around, turned his attention to María again.

By then the crowd, of neighbors and passersby, seeing clearly what was going on, became intent upon protecting her. And, as they formed a circle around María, and with shouts accused Ignacio of being a woman beater and a cabrón-a louse of the lowest sort-he, half drunk anyway and having better things to do, lost heart. In the meantime, a policeman, who had been eating a pork chop dinner in a café down the street, took a few last sips of his Hatuey beer and finally decided to see why so many people had gathered. He was approaching when Ignacio, his suit disheveled and feeling his guts twisting into knots, had taken off in another direction; along the way, every few yards, he’d turn around and curse María, then swear that he loved her, Ignacio’s shadow elongating on the cobblestones behind him, Ignacio, in all his ferocity, gradually diminishing inside a forest of columns until, all at once, he disappeared into the recesses of an arcade.