Beautiful Maria of My Soul

by Oscar Hijuelos

  That was María’s state of mind at three thirty in the morning, when she finally left the Club Nocturne the night of Paulita’s incident and went roaming through the streets. Even at that hour Havana, circa 1949, still cooked and sizzled and popped even more than it had years before. Hordes of American servicemen flew headlong through its arcades, crowded its bars, stumbled down its steps, vomited behind its columns and against its flecked walls. In some purlieus, lining up before the brothel doorways, countless men jammed the narrow walkways and sidewalks. Musicians performed everywhere. Barkers tried to lure passersby into their saloon doors, others into their casinos, slot machines glowing everywhere, ching, ching, ching; prostitutes, standing in doorways or leaning over balconies, bared their breasts, nipples pointed out insinuatingly; drums and trumpets (ay, Nestor) blew open the night. One of the chorus—they all smoked and drank—passed María her first cigarette, a Royale, and though she coughed at first, having breathed the purest country air for most of her life, she thought it might turn into a glamorous habit—Joan Crawford always smoked cigarettes in her movies after all. She wasn’t a drinker, hated bars, because even in the most touristic of places, like Sloppy Joe’s, men assumed she was a prostitute like Violeta, though sometimes they mistook her for either the Hollywood actress Lena Horne or Ava Gardner or, in fact, one of her favorites, Sarita Montiel, none of whom, many years later, would mean much to her daughter Teresita’s generation—María, so effortlessly enticing strangers with the radiance of her sculpted face, wouldn’t have lasted as much as five minutes in most of those bars along Obispo, Trocadero, or O’Reilly without someone either propositioning her or making a fool of himself by assuming he had a chance on earth to seduce her. Ignacio, good or bad as he had been, who wasn’t quite what met the eye, who loved to pull her jet-black hair back even while jamming himself into her shapely, quivering behind, that Ignacio, in meeting her, had surely been one of the luckiest men in Havana.

  And so when she went along the Paseo del Prado, where many a young couple sat necking in the shadows of the park, María, in making her way over to the Malecón, a balmy breeze sweeping off the churning sea, had only wanted distraction, to take in from the spray-misted pavement the full moon, whose light, in those moments, seemed a river burning through the water. All along the Prado, people were still eating and drinking in the arcade cafés. Strolling about with guitars in hand, musicians, mainly soneros like her papito, serenaded anyone who would toss them a few coins, and, of course, aside from all the catcalls and whistles she heard coming from the side streets and alleys, there were children following behind her, tugging on her skirt and begging for pennies.

  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.

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  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.

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  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.

  “¿ESTÁS BIEN?” NESTOR CASTILLO ASKED MARÍA. EMBARRASSED from publicly weeping and twisted by shame over her recent troubles, she leaned up against her edificio entranceway, her arms covering her breasts, where the dress had torn. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  “No, but thank you, señor,” she told him.

  Just then, as María started up the stairs, he couldn’t keep himself from following her. “If you would forgive my rudeness, I’m wondering if…if…you’d consider accompanying me out to a little place I know…. Perhaps it will make you feel better,” he said.

  “When?” she answered, wary but intrigued by this fellow’s sincerity.

  “Right now, if you can. Or tomorrow. Or anytime.”

  “Now? You must be joking.”

  María looked him over but with more clarity, amazed by how, in the heat of the moment, when she saw things with distortion, she’d hardly noticed his good looks. His dark eyes were liquid with mystery; and that mouth, almost too shapely and well formed to belong to a man, a nariz that would have looked perfectly at home on any movie star; even his teeth were pearly, and he had all of them to boot! His largish ears and crests of curly dark hair reminded her of a handsome postal courier she once knew back in Pinar del Río, this quiet fellow who’d come through their valley on a horse without anything to deliver, since nobody received mail, simply to pass the time and fill those guajiros in on what was going on in the outside world. (It was the courier who once told María about the dropping of an atomic bomb on the faraway island of Japan—who could have imagined that?) But there was also just something about this guapito that comforted her—a priestly air, perhaps, or something trustworthy if not beatific, and you know what else? He was so nervous around her and timid seeming, despite his killer looks, that she felt like taking care of him, as if he were one of those forlorn guajiros of her papi’s acquaintance, those salts of the earth who’d never hurt a soul and needed to be looked after by a woman of strength.

  “It will make you feel better,” he told her, trying again. “But I don’t want to impose.”

  “All right,” María told him finally. “But come upstairs with me. I’m filthy.”

  Closing the cast-iron gate behind them, as he followed her up the steps to her solar, dogs barking around them, María could almost feel his eyes alighting upon her rump. She needn’t have been so suspicious; walking into her parlor, with shattered plates and turned-over chairs strewn about the floor, that músico couldn’t have been more noble, more polite. He practically sat on his hands while María went into her bathroom to wash and put on a new dress, and passed his time looking around the place, probably wondering just who that miserable prick had been. All kinds of things would have hit that pobrecito just then. He noticed that she certainly had a lot of nice clothes in her closet; her appliances, including a Frigidaire, were new too, and he guessed that the pictures of the older folks in a frame on her dresser were her mamá y papá—or maybe abuelos—but, in any case, they looked like they’d had a hard time in life. The only thing he made a peep about was the beat-up guitar he saw leaning against a wall. She had gotten it for a few dollars in the market below from the fellow who sold instruments, so that she could practice the chords her papito once taught her.

  “Say there, do you mind if I strum on your guitar?” he called to her.

  “Do whatever you want, pero es un tareco—it’s a piece of junk.” Passing a sponge over her body, María felt grateful, but somehow sad at the same time, to have Ignacio so suddenly out of her life. She wondered if those little pains inside her heart meant that she’d always have a soft spot for that cruel man anyway. Once Nestor began singing, however, the intimations of his fine baritone, so sincere and somehow pained, got her all quivery inside and she wondered what was going on with her. Dressing quickly—a slip under a florid dress, no nylons, and a pair of low-heeled shoes—she soon joined him again in the room.

  “You sing really nicely,” she told him. And in that moment María began to wonder why she was already feeling affection, for a fellow she hardly knew.

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Handsome as hell, Nestor Castillo made the oddest impressions on her. As they walked in Havana vieja, not once had he looked at any of the other women who passed by. He seemed so self-effacing, and beyond this tawdry world, it would not have surprised María if, while blinking her eyes, she had turned around to find him wearing a priest’s vestments and holding one of those things that resemble ice cream scoops, an aspergillum, from which priests sprinkle holy water, Nestor blessing the narrow sidewalks and cobblestones before them. They’d hardly said a word to each other, but once they sat down in that café, up on a terrace, the horizon streaked with plains of conch pink in the sun’s setting glow, and after a few glasses of hearty red Spanish wine, thick as blood, Nestor began to overcome his initial timidity. By their table, and for the first time that night, as he wasn’t one for conversing easily, he broke into a big horsey grin and told her, “You know what? My mother’s name is also María. Now isn’t that something?”

  Well, given that practically half of the females in Cuba were Marías, it shouldn’t have seemed so amazing to anyone. But why shouldn’t she smile back at that sweet fellow? While a squat but majestic jukebox glowed away in a corner of that café, playing some nice old romantic ditties—the kind Nestor aspired to writ
e himself—María suddenly found that coincidence of their meeting on such a dismal day to be unimaginably significant, as if foretold by the stars.

  Oh, it was all so very poetic, like something out of a bolero. And Nestor could have stepped out of a bolero as well. His outlandishly handsome features, his way of raising his eyebrows when something tasted particularly good, his dark eyes, which glanced at her from time to time, and the slightest of smiles that crossed his mouth now and then, but shyly, as if there was something unmanly about smiling, gave him a tragic air. She didn’t know him well, but María liked his solemnity, as if he were a matador, and the shy manner with which he comported himself—such a pleasant change from how most men regarded her. She couldn’t say he was easygoing or particularly talkative. But the way he looked into her eyes, as if he were seeing something wonderful in them, was more than enough to soothe her nerves.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t notice the way he struggled to look only at her face—surely he must have been aware of her body. And what was that hanging around his neck but a crucifix on a chain? Of course, she told him that she was a dancer at a cabaret, lately a featured performer, which was nice except that she only made a few dollars more a week than the others. She could have spoken about the problems she was having with the floor show manager, who, like most managers, unless they preferred men, eventually got around to expecting certain things from their dancers—how those bosses disgusted her. But she didn’t. Nor did she share with him the tawdrier episodes of her experience, the sort that made a woman, however beautiful, feel cheap and used. In fact, María was sometimes ashamed of her profession, almost as ashamed of her ignorance. No, on that night, as she would remember, María preferred to hear about Nestor’s own life and to take in the soulfulness of his expression, the tenderness of his voice.