The only book he ever talked about was Carlos Casteneda’s A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, and he could go on about it for hours at a time. Musically, his favorite prop was a drone machine from Katmandu, which drove me crazy. He’d say, “I have a new tune.” And, putting on the drone, which was like a deep sitar hum that went on endlessly, he’d fiddle with some scales on his guitar and play the same things over and over again.
Somehow, because he always seemed to be wanting, I once brought him home to my folks’ apartment on Tiemann Place, just off 124th Street and Broadway, for dinner. In my Cuban household the stylistic caprices of hippie youth had never been particularly appreciated. And yet, when faced with Max in his unwashed splendor, my mother, staring at him for a long time, had decided that, deep down, he was a decent lost soul—or, in the parlance of Cubans, un pobrecito, a fellow who, like me, had been thrown, through no fault of his own, from the happy parade of life. To this day I have no idea how Max won my mother over, since he had passed out after dinner, but I imagine it had to do with the one thing I told her about him: “His father was a psychiatrist who committed suicide.” After hearing that, my mother, hard as she could be, forgave his every folly and, sending him home with a pot full of leftover arroz con pollo, always spoke of him reverentially, as if he were somehow related to the family. (My superintendent father, on the other hand, told me, shaking his head, “You do not want to end up like him.”)
“So what’s going on?” Max cheerfully asked me after I had finally sat down.
“Well, you’re not going to believe this, man, but just a few minutes ago I actually met John Lennon.”
And I told him the whole story and showed him the signed book. He looked it over, and we drank a lot, and by the time the evening ended, Max, in one of his more lucid moments, declared: “Hey, John Lennon, we got to get our music to him.”
Okay, this is a true story—granted, with a lot of holes in it—but in the following week, after Max and I had worked hard to make up the best tape of our songs, we went over to Lennon’s building, the Dakota, on West 72nd Street, and tried to leave a cassette in an envelope for John Lennon with a doorman whose station was an entryway booth. He would not accept it, saying, “Please move along or I’ll call the police.” For a few hours, standing out on the sidewalk, we watched people walking in and out of the Dakota’s majestic entranceway, among them Rex Reed, the movie critic; and Lauren Bacall, the famous movie actress. We saw Shelley Winters go inside. Then for hours nothing happened. But along the way, I had noticed a couple of building workers in gray uniforms standing outside by the Rosemary’s Baby railings, near a hot-dog cart on the corner, talking amongst themselves in Spanish. I went up to one of them, a stiletto-thin dude, and in Spanish asked if he could just do us the big favor of dropping our little manila envelope in John Lennon’s mailbox. I also handed him a twenty-dollar bill, and, with a shrug, he said he would.
In the accompanying letter to Mr. Lennon, which I had carefully typed out in the office, I mentioned our chance meeting and that I had included a cassette for “one of my idols to listen to.” I went into a mini-history of my admiration for what he—John Lennon, as the “greatest Beatle”—had meant to me. I ranked “Norwegian Wood” as one of the best of the Beatles tunes ever, and before I could become too gushing about “A Day in the Life,” I signed off with a humble plea that he might listen to our songs. I ended it with a “respectfully yours” and included my home telephone number.
So here’s the thing: Though I never once really thought he would respond, the notion pecked at my head. For a month, even though I considered that the whole business might be taken as an intrusion into John Lennon’s privacy, and I did not for a moment really believe that it would lead to anything at all, whenever I came home from work I’d ask my mother if anyone, aside from friends, had called. Night after night, she’d say that no one had. But then one evening, while my pop was out attending to some emergency, as we sat for dinner in our kitchen, the pipes click-clacking around us, she told me, “By the way, Hijo, this afternoon a man called, but, I’m sorry, I could not understand everything he was saying. El tenìa un acento horrible,” she concluded, making a face as she passed me some rice.
Great, I thought: So perhaps John Lennon himself had actually taken the trouble to call me, only to baffle my mother with his lilting Liverpool accent.
“Did this man leave a name?”
“No, he only asked if you were at home.”
“But did he at least give you a telephone number?”
“Yes, yes,” she snapped. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“No, of course not, Mama,” I said consolingly, having learned to never pick on her faulty English over the years. Then her mood changed. “I’ll get it for you,” she said happily.
From the bedroom, which was just off the kitchen, she got the piece of composition-book paper on which she had thickly written down, in what looked like an eyeliner pencil, three different numbers.
“I don’t know which one is correct,” she told me. “I had to keep asking him to please repeat los numeros—I don’t think he understood my English very well.”
I took a deep breath, looking them over and hoping for the best. I tried not to think about the time when a girl I had once fallen madly in love with in California had tried to reach me out of the blue: The number that my mother had written down hadn’t even been close: I wondered if it would be so with Mr. Lennon, if indeed it was he who had called.
* * *
Now, if you’ve guessed that none of the numbers worked out, then you’ve got that right. Every variation I tried resulted in the same disconnected messages, or with someone chafing when, calling from the office, I asked if I might speak with John Lennon. More than a few affable New Yorkers told me, “What are you, nuts?” Though it was frustrating, to say the least, Max and me kept on hoping that perhaps Mr. Lennon, if it was him, might call again.
* * *
Still, despite that missed opportunity, it was enough to get my imagination going, for not a day went by when I didn’t think about what might have happened. In the midst of filing annual reports, sorting receipts, and typing out letters for my boss in the office, I’d envision a visit to Lennon’s apartment to discuss his plans to help me and Max record a hit tune; our lunches (in a light-filled parlor overlooking Central Park), consisting of cucumber sandwiches, while we sipped English tea. I fantasized about the spectacular thrill of bringing him up to Tiemann Place and into Cannon’s Bar: all the drunks and pretty girls, soaking up the booze, startled and envious, as I walked in with Mr. Lennon to have a couple of beers, just like regular guys. Afterward, I’d bring him up to the apartment to meet my folks. My mother would make herself busy in the kitchen, cooking him a special meal, while my father—who always smelled vaguely of plumber’s gum—in the living room on a reclining chair, a copy of the Daily News or El Diario on his lap, would beam after recognizing that famous face. I would say, “Pop, this is my friendJohn Lennon.” And my father, looking him up and down, his brow creasing with judgment, would extend his hand and, smiling, offer Mr. Lennon a drink.
Of course, as a primo musician, John Lennon would be curious about all the old Cuban recordings packed thick into a bookcase near our 1960s-vintage RCA console, and he might compliment my mother about her collection of Spanish fans, spread out over the bright red plastic-covered couch on the living-room wall, like a coterie of butterflies, their wings printed with “Greetings from Seville!” “Viva Madrid!” and “Havana 1952.” He would also notice some of the small oil paintings that my father, an amateur artist, had made—not only of his memories of Cuba, but of rooftop scenes of copper sunsets, of West Harlem in all its glory. After our meal, Mr. Lennon would ask to borrow my old Stella guitar and play some tunes—not of his own composition, but the ones made famous by Elvis Presley. Passersby on the street below, from junkies to nervous old ladies, would stop to listen, regarding our windows on the fourth floor with wonderment and admira
tion.
Later, I’d take Mr. Lennon into my room, the one I had moved back into after a rough breakup, at the far end of the hall; there I’d show him some of the books I had accumulated over the years: much science fiction about journeys to other worlds, books on drawing technique, and, best of all, those about classical antiquity and archaeology, subjects that had always fascinated me.
“And that one?” John Lennon would ask.
“It’s about Heinrich Schliemann.”
“The fellow who found Troy?”
“Yes, sir. And I have books about Carter, Layard, and Woolley.”
“Ah, archaeology,” he’d say. “Now that’s something interestin’.”
And, having an inkling of Lennon’s bawdier tastes, I’d show him the small collection of pornographic magazines that I kept stashed in my closet under a pile of horror fanzines and the old church missal from my childhood; or, parting the window’s curtains, I’d tell him to take a peek across the courtyard into a certain bedroom, where the beautiful half Puerto Rican, half Irish girl Kathy Morales often paraded about in the nude. Certainly he’d notice the crucifix over my bed, with its darkened bronze Jesus looking forlornly out over time, right next to the photograph I kept of me and my best childhood pal, Albert, posing as teenagers in the park. I would tell John Lennon, “He was always a good kid, and wouldn’t you know it, Mr. Lennon, he’s a priest now, a missionary.”
And then, for reasons I cannot pinpoint, I’d ask John Lennon, “How about the afterlife”— something I still think a lot about—“I mean, don’t you suppose that if a human being has a soul, that it might continue on?”
“Can’t say for sure,” he’d answer, “but once you’re dead, you probably stay dead.”
“But haven’t you ever dreamed about lasting forever?”
“Not really,” he’d say a little sternly. “I sometimes dream up songs, which is good enough for me.”
“But haven’t you ever wanted that?”
“I suppose one should.”
“There must be something, don’t you think?” I’d press further.
“Who in Aunt Mary’s kitchen knows!” he’d snap. “We’ll all find out one day, won’t we?”
Finally, in the stillness of that imagining, I would ask the former Beatle the question that I was always asking myself: “Have you ever felt completely alone in this life?” To which John Lennon would reply, “Always.”
* * *
Well, we all know what happened to him that December: I first heard about it while watching some PBS show, when a female newscaster, half in tears and looking rather shaken, broke in with the startling news. The following weekend Max and I actually played a gig (an unusual thing for us) at a bar on the West Side—not of our songs, but those of the Beatles. Later, I learned what a friend of my brother’s wife had told her. Married to one of the cops who had taken John Lennon to the hospital, she reported that Mr. Lennon had been polite and ever thankful to the officers, to the end.
And then it all passed. Long after I’d left my office job, in my new life as a high-school teacher, I’d occasionally remember that chance meeting with John Lennon so long ago. I still have that copy of A Spaniard in the Works, and I still think of that day when he signed it. Above all, despite the futility of the thought, I’d often wonder if he had ever listened to our songs, and, if so, what he might have told us about them.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Welcome
Another Spaniard in the Works
Foreword
Another Spaniard in the Works
Newsletters
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by The Estate of Oscar Hijuelos
Foreword copyright © 2015 by Craig Nova
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-6152-0
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