Oscar Hijuelos - Beautiful María of My Soul

That query brought in responses by the drove; apparently there were more than just a few women out in south Florida ’s radio land, cubanas all, who called the station claiming to be none other than that grand beauty herself. Out in Northwest Terrace one morning, it happened that María, while preparing to head out to her dance studio, heard the following, as she was removing curlers from her hair.

“Muy buenos días. My name, of course, is María. I know that everyone is wondering who beautiful María is, and, well, I should tell you, señores y señoras, that it is me. I met Nestor Castillo, who in the movie Los Mambo Kings was played by that guapo Antonio Banderas, when I was a young and veerrrry beautiful woman. Yes, that’s true… I was on my way to meet my papi at the Gallego Society in Havana, and walking along the Paseo when my heel broke. And while I was bending over to pick it up, I saw Nestor, so handsome, so elegant, crouching down to get it for me. Well, while he handed over that heel and looked at me with his beautiful eyes, I knew that there was no resisting him. And so we became-how should an abuela put it?-lovers, hee, hee, hee.”

Another call:

“Señoras y señores, soy la Señora María Pena, and, veramente, I am a woman of late middle age now, but in my time, when I was una pollita, I frequented the clubs of Havana. I wasn’t one of those young ladies of easy persuasion to whom any man could suggest anything and win her favors-I would never sleep with a man outside of matrimony, do you understand that? But, I will tell you that men were attracted to me like flies to honey, and these two young Mambo Kings, I swear to you, were no different. Well, one night I happened to be in a club called the Eight Ball of Remedios when these two musicians, the Castillo brothers, and their little combo turned up. One of them, the older one-Cesar, I believe he was called-was very handsome but so arrogant and full of himself that he held no interest for me. I will tell you anyway, in all modesty, that he liked me a lot-and kept smiling my way-because I was very beautiful y tenía una figura fabulosa, round in all the right places, un cuerpo that left men dizzy to look at me… But then his brother Nestor, mi amorcito, came out holding a trumpet, and I can tell you it makes me burst with delight to remember que lindo he was, like a prince and not just any musician. And so refined and delicate in his movements that I nearly died with desire just looking at him… I watched him all night-and Nestorito certainly, and I mean certainly, noticed me… Afterwards he came over to my table, but so shyly, to tell me that my smiles had made him happy. Y bueno, after that he sat down right next to me, and we got to know each other a little; and that very night, after a bit of pleasant conversation, he looked deeply into my eyes, and, like a Valentino, declared that I was the kind of girl he might love. Well, the rest I cannot tell you, as young children might be listening, but I will only say this: when you hear that canción, ‘La bella María de mi alma,’ that María was me.”

That same morning, despite the impossibility of more than one beautiful María existing, still others vied for that role. Bemused, the program host took the calls good-naturedly enough, for there seemed to be no end to the number of late middle-aged cubanas who wanted to believe they were truly María. Oh, they met Nestor while strolling along the Malecón, or in the Cementerio de Colón, or out at the dog track; or they bumped into him in an arcade. There were so many claimants that the host began to have fun assigning these Marías numbers: “Here, on the line, we have María número siete.”

After a while, María, listening to that program over several mornings, finally lost her patience with that whole business and decided that she just had to come forward with her story. She had, after all, photographs of herself and Nestor to offer as proof, as well as a dozen faded letters he had sent her from New York in those days. And so María, in that atmosphere of hoopla-for everyone in Miami was still talking about that movie-called the station, but somewhat reluctantly, for even those years later the very thought of Nestor and what could have been still passed through her heart as a wistful lament.

A telephone interview with a producer, a nice young cubana named Estelle, followed a few days afterwards, and, short of describing Nestor’s pinga in marvelous detail, María could not have been more persuasive. And so as a lark and a possible amusement for the listeners of that show, for in a realm of so many other Marías she seemed the most credible, they invited her to appear live on the show. Crackpot or not, one Saturday morning she set out with Teresita to go on the air.

En route, María, pouting as she did whenever she contemplated the past, hardly said a word, as if she were saving herself for the interviewer, though she occasionally broke her silence over some landmark along the highway, her only utterances being “Eh” and “Sí” and “Mira, allí.” Once they had pulled into the radio station parking lot, which like so many others lacked charm, María, feeling somewhat delighted, put on a show for the roly-poly entranceway guard. Crossing the lot, she broke out into an impromptu rumba, shaking her shoulders and hips as if she were a young girl again, and as if this fellow could possibly have known just who she happend to be. Her daughter sighed, and the roly-poly attendant broke out into the broadest ain’t-that-just-like-my-grandma grin. It was under such circumstances that beautiful María, at the resilient age of sixty-two, más o menos, but still nicely put together, walked into the studio’s greenroom, where she was to wait beside her daughter for an hour before going on.

The young producer handed her a cup of orange juice, which she gratefully accepted, though, to be honest, María, her nerves on edge, would have preferred a drink of rum. To her medically astute daughter’s annoyance, she lit a cigarette (“Pero son Virginia Slims!”) and tapped her feet to the Cuban song the station was playing for its radio audience, “El manicero,” or “The Peanut Vendor,” as performed by Antonio Machín, lead singer of the Don Azpiazú Havana Casino Orchestra, circa 1932, his emphatic voice blaring amicably through the studio’s ceiling speakers. Aside from pointing to a basket of pastries and ordering “Pass me that one,” then “No, that one,” María had hardly a thing to say to Teresita, for when she felt nervous, María tended to descend into herself, her thoughts lost to the world. She passed the time looking over some People magazines while Teresita stayed busy rifling through a stack of hospital folders. A mind-bludgeoning block of advertisements and news stories about world and local events that hardly interested her boomed through the room, and then, finally, when she was nearly at the end of her patience, the producer escorted María into the broadcast booth.

There she took a seat before a foam-padded microphone, which, in its phallic bulk and the way it seemed to stare at her, she found both familiar and obtrusive. After a few more commercials, she waited for the host, this goateed fellow named Emilio Santos, to make his introduction.

As the segment began, he cued up a tape: it began with Marco Rizo’s stirring theme for the I Love Lucy show and then slipped into Desi’s introduction of the Castillo brothers as they had appeared on the mock stage of the program’s Club Tropicana in the spring of 1956 to perform “Beautiful María of My Soul.” With its violins, piano, and the uplifting harmonies of Nestor and Cesar Castillo, that bolero played in its entirety-some three minutes. María listened carefully and, hardly moving at all-she was just staring at her daughter seated in a corner-emanated both dignity and a sense of justly earned entitlement. Finally, it seemed, after so many years of obscurity, her moment was about to arrive.