The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

by Oscar Hijuelos

  These principles worked to solve the other problems of his life. He has since achieved the greatest kind of success with his friends, his family. He has won the respect and love of others and found happiness the American Way! Read on, dear prospective buyer. It doesn’t matter what walk of life you’re from. Whether you’re rich or poor, Chinaman, Indian, or from the planet Mars, this book can change your life!

  I know these principles work, because I was that man! The D. D. Vanderbilt secrets of happiness will work for you!

  Momentarily uplifted, Nestor paid the 79 cents plus tax (.04) for this book and then took the bus home to La Salle Street, where he hoped to find revelation among its pages.

  Life continued much as it had and yet that book became Nestor’s constant companion. Forward America! became dogeared in his back pocket. He needed help for the spirit but not the body: his day job in the Kowolski meat-packing plant on 125th Street left him so exhausted that he’d have to rest up a few hours before getting dressed for a night job that would last until four in the morning. But he always had the strength to bed Delores down. Young and firm Delores had skin so smooth and warm to the touch that all she had to do was open her blouse and they would soon be making love. And Cesar? Even though she used to muffle her moans of pleasure in a pillow, her brother-in-law was like a bloodhound or a Sherlock Holmes when it came to knowing their bedroom habits and he would leave the apartment to check out the girls on the street corner or head down to the park to watch the boats going by on the river, killing an hour’s time before returning to the apartment to find Delorita with her face flushed and her voice humming as she happily went about the ladylike business of cooking dinner.

  Once Delorita had moved in, Cesar had had to change many of his habits. He had a room on the courtyard and from his window he could see his brother’s window and had the fortune or misfortune one day, while feeding the alleycats pieces of his leftover lunch and cupcakes, to look over and notice, through a narrow opening in that bedroom’s curtains, his sister-in-law standing naked, looking very voluptuous and fuckable before the mirror. He knew that Beautiful María was fine, but when he saw Delores naked, he thought Dios mío!, took a deep breath, shook his head, and decided for the sake of his sanity and family peace to keep his distance from Delores. He did this without much trouble, as he had his own girls, but all the same he couldn’t stand to walk down the hall or sit in the living room reading a newspaper or with a guitar and hear their bed shaking, the headboard thumping into the wall, his brother’s loud panting and her efforts to quiet him, Sssssh sssssssssh, because she didn’t want people to hear them or to know what they were doing, a joke considering how her fecund body filled the apartment with a scent of meat, cinnamon, and blood. And so Cesar would go out for his walks, and daydreaming.

  AND NOW THIS TEN-CENT 78 RPM metal disc recorded in a “Record Your Memories” booth in Coney Island, 1954:

  (Laughter) (Static) (Laughter) (A man’s and a woman’s voices joking, whispering, the man’s voice saying) Go ahead, go ahead . . .

  Okay. (Static) Ayyyyy! Don’t grab me there! (Laughter) (In the background the roaring roller coaster as it makes a turn and a kid shouting in English) Heeeeeeey, Johnny, ahm over heah, you dumb motherfuckah. (Laughter) Bueno, hello out there in radio land! (Laughter) This is Angie Pérez and I (Neck kisses and slurpy sounds) (Laughter) (Static) I . . . I . . . ayyyyy! just want to say that I’m here with my new boyfriend, Cesar, that is, the famous Cesar Castillo, at Coney Island, July 10, 1954, and I just want to say that he is the freshest cochino in the world aaaayyyy! (Laughter) And we’re having a great time. And he told me to say, Heeeellllo, Neessstor, and to everyone at home there! And . . . (Static) Oh, time’s running out. The, the red light is flashing. We have to say goodbye. Goodbye! Good (Static and click).

  Although the Mambo Kings were one of the more popular bands in New York and, one month in 1954, had made it to number 5 in a Brooklyn Herald popularity poll (behind Tito Rodríguez, Machito, José Fajardo, Tito Puente), Cesar never made much money. What could thirteen musicians plus a manager plus the union plus the IRS plus the equipment managers and drivers make if they were paid $500 for a weekend job? One of his biggest problems was that Cesar had never agreed to sign an “exclusive management contract.” He’d heard too many stories about singers and bands who’d signed all their future earnings away just so they could get a good rate in a prestigious club like the El Morocco. These contracts would allow the singer to perform elsewhere but always cut the club owner in for a percentage of the earnings, regardless of whether the performer ever worked in the big-time club again. Those contracts ruined the lives of many musicians, drove a number out of the business and into the Merchant Marine, the Army, inspired name changes and, in a few instances, murders. (A song in Cesar’s head? Mafia, mafia, mafia. Italian, Puerto Rican, Jewish mafia. Black tuxedos, white tuxedos.)

  Because of his refusal, he was always getting into shouting matches with club owners who’d pressure him. And this behavior got him into trouble with the wrong people. When they played certain clubs, they would make less money than they deserved. Some of these joints were run by tan-suited Puerto Rican gangsters who didn’t like Cubans. He was always telling them to go fuck themselves and to shove their clubs up the fondillos of their sporty trousers.

  But, because Cesar’s bad temper was putting his fellow band-members out of work, Nestor would say, “Be reasonable, hombre,” and the Mambo King would go back to these very same club owners and ask their forgiveness. Later he’d feel like shit.

  He was always trying to hustle money so that he could have nice watches, suits, and expensive shoes, take out women like Vanna Vane, and play the sport with his friends in a bar. He liked to buy people presents, gifts for the family and his friends. He never thought twice about paying for dinner or the movies when the family went out. He was the type of fellow to walk thirty blocks to save a fifteen-cent train fare, only to buy a round of drinks at the bar. He had all kinds of expenses, mainly from his social life, but he was always betting the horses on credit, and borrowing off his friends and fellow musicians when he lost. He always needed money. It had flown out of his pockets in Cuba and it flew out of his pockets in New York. He spent generously, his impoverished youth in Cuba be damned.

  There was something else, too. As much as he had vowed never to get married again, he still thought about his daughter, Mariela, down in Cuba. Now and then, if something came through for him—if he got paid for singing on a record, or a horse actually won for him—he would buy a money order and send it to his daughter. By now she was nine years old, and from time to time he’d receive a letter from her, thanking him for his gifts. Once, after some difficulty with his wife, he got permission to visit little Mariela in Havana in 1952. By then his ex-wife had remarried and was living off Calle 20 with her schoolteacher husband, an older fellow named Carlos Torres. Bent on impressing Mariela, he took her into all the big department stores—Fin de Siglo, La Época, and El Encanto—buying her dresses and toys. And he bought her everything she wanted to eat, appearing before her as a benevolent being who’d smelled of cologne on whose lap she once used to sit. This Mariela had turned out to be a nice little girl, tender and affectionate. Leaving her at the end of that trip proved much more difficult than he had planned. So he always wanted to keep his memory alive in her mind through the sending of gifts. But week to week, his pockets were empty, no matter what he did to make money.

  And he wanted to get a nice new automobile. He had bought Manny the bassist’s used Oldsmobile for a few hundred dollars, and while it ran well, it was quite beat up from being used for all these Mambo King jobs. Parked outside of clubs and in dance-hall parking lots, it always had people sitting on it, jumping on it, making out on its hood. Plus a few accidents hadn’t helped. He wanted a 1955 DeSoto and would walk into DeSoto dealerships every few months to examine the upholstery and the dashboard and the supersonic, space-age V-8 turbo-thrust engine, “whispering” clutch, and 180-d
egree viewerama window. And he loved its female roundness and sheeny cream-white skin, bumper guards that protruded like breasts and dimpled hood, curvy like a fine female rump. Decked out in a pink suit with lavender shirt and white tie, and black-brimmed cane hat, Cesar Castillo would walk into the showrooms and inquire about the automobile’s price, talk himself behind the wheel, and sit back, daydreaming about the fabulous days that would be waiting for him were he the owner of so fine a car.

  ONE TUESDAY NIGHT IN 1955 THE Cuban bandleader and television personality Desi Arnaz walked into the Mambo Nine Club on 58th Street and Eighth Avenue to check out the talent. Someone had told him about two Cuban brothers, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, that they were good singers and songwriters who might have some material for Arnaz to use on his show. The stage of the Mambo Nine was only ten feet wide, more suited for a cabaret act than for a thirteen-piece orchestra, but somehow the brothers’ group, the Mambo Kings, set up with their congas, their horns, trombones, flute, stand-up bass, saxophones, and a grand piano behind a few ball microphones. This club was where the Mambo Kings sometimes tried out new numbers on fellow musicians and composers who’d come by, people like Machito and the great Rafael Hernández, composer of “El Lamento Borincano,” who’d give them advice and encouragement. It was a place where musicians from the best bands in the city came in to drink, talk shop, and see what was going on. Under the glow of red-and-white stage lights the Mambo Kings played fast dance tunes like “El Bodeguero” and dreamy arrangements of slow, romantic boleros like “Bésame Mucho.” Mr. Arnaz was sitting in the back with his pretty wife, the red glow of a candle vaguely illuminating his dark, intense eyes, liking very much what he was seeing and hearing . . . In white silk suits, and performing side by side before the big ball microphone, the two brothers showed an obvious affection for each other, the audience, and the music. Arnaz, chin resting on a fist, came to certain conclusions about them.

  Appearing in the light, arms spreading wide before him, a halo of aureolitic splendor around his head, it was Cesar Castillo who reminded Arnaz of the old-fashioned crooners of society ballrooms and dance halls of Cuba, men with their hair slicked down and parted in the middle, thin mustaches and butterfly-looking lace bow ties. Yes, Cesar’s voice evoked for Arnaz moonlit nights, flowers, and blue-crowned nightingales on the wing, his was the voice of the eternal caballero serenading a woman on her wrought-iron balcony, a man who would die for the alluring bud of love.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this next song is a little canción that me and my brother Nestor here started to write when we first came up to the States some years ago. It’s called ‘Bella María de Mi Alma,’ or ‘Beautiful María of My Soul,’ and it’s about the sadness and torment of love. We hope you like it.”

  Cesar nodded to his pianist, the inimitable and ever-elegant Miguel Montoya, dapper in white from head to toe, who struck an A-minor chord, and then the congas and horns came in, Nestor’s opening solo bouncing off the walls and making Arnaz’s glass hum. And then Cesar began to sing the verses Nestor had been writing on a cold, lonely night spent shivering by a radiator, verses inspired by the Havana beauty who had broken his heart. Among those lyrics, these lines:

  . . . How can I hate you

  if I love you so?

  I can’t explain my torment,

  for I don’t know how to live

  without your love . . .

  What delicious pain

  love has brought to me

  in the form of a woman.

  My torment and ecstasy,

  María, my life,

  Beautiful María of my soul . . .

  Arnaz listened attentively. During the chorus, when the two brothers were harmonizing like angels aloft on a cloud and confiding their pain, Arnaz thought about his own past love, his love for his wife and others, like his family down in Cuba and old friends he had not seen in a long time. As he watched the dance floor, where young couples sighed and kissed, Arnaz leaned over to his wife and said, “I must invite these fellows to play on the show.”

  Later, when the brothers were drinking by the bar, Arnaz lived up to his reputation as a friendly man and introduced himself, saying, with extended hand, “Desi Arnaz.” He was wearing a sharp blue serge suit, white silk shirt, pink polka-dotted tie, and a frilly fringed handkerchief that bloomed like a tulip from his breast pocket. He shook their hands and ordered a round of drinks for all the musicians, complimented the brothers on their performance, and then invited them and their arranger-pianist Miguel Montoya to sit at his table. Then they met Lucille Ball, who spoke surprisingly good Spanish. She was dressed in a pearl-button blouse with a velvet diamond-broached vest and a long skirt. Her hands and wrists glittered with rings and bracelets and she had curly red hair that had been done up in a bouffant, and beautiful blue eyes. Seated beside her husband, she had been attentively writing in a notebook densely filled with dates and numbers and names, and when the brothers approached, though she had graciously smiled, she had also tapped the face of her wristwatch, showing the time to Arnaz.

  They were soon drinking champagne, the bottle kept chilled in a gold ice bucket. Lucille Ball nodded, smiled pleasantly, and every now and then leaned over and whispered into her husband’s ear. But soon enough she slid into the background, allowing the men to smoke their panatelas from Havana, make their toasts and conversation. As this was a time when every Cuban in New York knew every other Cuban, the question was inevitable: “And what part of Cuba are you fellows from?”

  “From a town called Las Piñas, surely you must know it, a sugar-mill town in Oriente.”

  “Of course, I come from Santiago de Cuba myself. I’m from Oriente, too!”

  The knowledge that they were all from the same part of the world made them shake hands and nod at Arnaz in a brotherly way, as if they’d known each other for years and years.

  “We grew up on the sugar mill and then we moved over to a farm when our father tried the livestock business,” Cesar told Arnaz. “But I had to get out of there and bring my brother here with me. Cutting off the heads of animals wasn’t for us . . .Besides, I’d always wanted to be a singer, tú sabes, since my childhood, I always did my best to hang around musicians.”

  “It was the exact same thing for me,” Arnaz said.

  While talking about the dance-hall scene in Oriente, they discovered they had one more thing in common: they had both worked with the same orchestra leader in Cuba, Julián García and his Orquesta Típica.

  The mention of that name had Arnaz slapping his knee. “Julián García was quite a character. Lucy, you should’ve seen him. He used to make us all wear white gloves and outfits in the worst heat, even those musicians to whom it was an impediment. And he carted around palm trees and Greek statues to give the orchestra a little class—was it the same for you?”

  “Absolutely!” Cesar exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “You know something, Mr. Arnaz, I swear that I saw you in Santiago. You were there that day in Julián’s place, sitting on the stage . . . behind a harp or something, I don’t remember exactly when, but I can recall seeing your name on the posters outside the dance hall where Julián rehearsed.”

  “On that steep hill from whose top you could see the harbor?”

  “That was it. The dance hall on Zayas Street.”

  “Yes! What year was that, coño?”

  “Nineteen thirty . . .”

  “. . . Seven! Must have been, because I left for the States that year.”

  “And Julián said that I was replacing a singer going to the States! As I think about it, that was you, sitting and strumming a guitar. Yes?”

  “. . . Yes, it comes back to me. I was waiting for a friend. Say, wait a minute, didn’t we speak to one another?”

  “We did!”

  And then in the way that Cubans get really friendly, Arnaz and Cesar reinvented their pasts so that, in fact, they had probably been good friends.

  “Nearly twenty years ago, can you imagine that? Dios mío,” Arnaz said.
“Nearly twenty years just like that.”

  (And suddenly it was the day again when he had first met Arnaz, back in Cuba, clear as morning light: he was nineteen years old and walking up a steep hill in Santiago de Cuba, and at that time of day the westward sun was throwing toward infinity the shadows of wrought-iron balconies and the rooftops. Along the route there was a woman who always offered passersby, exhausted from the climb, glasses of cool water. On top of the hill, the burning disc of the sun, and then the dance hall itself and its refuge of shady arcades and a coolness inside its heavy oak doors. Cesar could remember looking across the dance-hall stage, through the strings of a Spanish harp, and seeing a young and handsome man sitting beside the piano; had him pinned for a gallego like himself. Beside the young man sat the immense Julián García, head swimming in hair dye and sweat, looking through some sheet music.

  “And what will you begin with, my friend?”

  “María la O.”

  Julián began to play the chords to that canción by Lecuona. Cesar, black-brimmed cane hat in hand, and still nervous at the prospect of performing with Julián García, sang his heart out in a flamboyant style, using extended high notes to end phrases, arms flailing about dramatically. When he finished, Julián grunted, saying, “Good,” and the young singer nodded. Then Julián ran him through some more songs and, satisfied with Cesar’s singing, told him: “Come back here tomorrow and we’ll rehearse with the other musicians, the full orchestra, okay?”