Beautiful Maria of My Soul

by Oscar Hijuelos

  Reeling, she got back to her seat in time to watch a distraught Cesar Castillo, unable to perform anywhere since Nestor’s death, milling about the Manhattan club he had opened in his late brother’s memory. Nestor’s widow, Delores, wanting him to get back to the passion that is in his blood, implores him to go onstage and sing, yes, that song about the other love of Nestor’s life, “Beautiful María of My Soul.” Once that music starts, with all its flourishes, though the emotional logic of that moment escaped Teresita, and even María thought the wife surely had some cucarachas in her head to make such a request, Cesar agrees, and, as he belts out the movie version of Nestor’s song of longing for María, in a filmic sleight of hand, Nestor, in a white tuxedo, reappears magically by his brother’s side, as if he had indeed been resurrected from the dead.

  Maria trembled, then sighed.

  Afterwards, the principals were brought onstage and introduced, among them the author himself, who put on a hammy show of blowing kisses out to the audience. “Por Dios, who does he think he is, Marlon Brando?” Teresita asked her mother. And once the actors had taken their bows and the theater emptied, Teresita, María, and Luis made their way to the Versailles restaurant to eat a dinner of hearty Cuban fare and discuss the film. Luis’s favorite parts featured the character that Celia Cruz played, not just for her performance but because she was the only Cuban who had a major role in it. Teresita was grateful that the film exhibited restraint when it came to the love scenes—it was far less randy than the book—and she thought the sexy actors playing the brothers were exhilarating to watch. As for María? Had she been one of the celebrities interviewed by the press afterwards she would have summarized her reaction with a simple phrase: “Fue muy bonito”—“It was very nice.” But, the truth be told, there was something about the experience of watching the Mambo Kings movie that had left her feeling a little glum. It was if she had been dropped into a dream in which some other version of herself had become nothing more than a watered-down walk-on character in some fantastic show, as if she, the real María, who had just peered into the eyes of Nestor Castillo, had yet to really exist as far as the world was concerned.

  Chapter FIFTY-ONE

  She’d eventually get her just dues, however: not money but a modicum of recognition. After the film had been released in Miami, a Spanish-language radio station out of Hialeah, WCMQ, had queried its listeners about which version of “Beautiful María of My Soul”—the original, from 1955, or the one composed for the movie—was the better. Opinions were divided along generational lines—the older listeners, having their own memories, preferred the song as it had been written, while the younger folks voted, almost universally, for the one performed in the film. Along the way, while discussing the movie itself, the host of a nostalgia show entitled Cuando Cuba Era Cuba, in recalling that he had once met the Castillo brothers in Havana, wondered on air if anyone out in the listening audience happened to know anything about the woman for whom the original bolero had been composed. (“By all means,” the pitch went, “if you have information, please call in.”)

  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 r
umba, 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.

  “Compañeros, amigos, damas y caballeros,” the host excitedly began. “I hope you are enjoying this lovely morning, and speaking of loveliness, for true beauty is never subject to the castigations of age, with us today is the one and only María Rivera, as she called herself for the stage…. If this name does not immediately ring any bells with my younger listeners, please go ask your abuelos—your grandfolks—about the 1956 bolero the original ‘Beautiful María of My Soul,’ a cherished song from la Cuba que fue. As my listeners know, we have been up to our necks with other Marías lately—what imaginations some of you ladies have!—but our visitor today, a most elegant and well-preserved woman, surely beautiful, has presented the station with undeniable proof of her claims—mainly letters from Nestor Castillo himself, and some wonderful photos that, well, it breaks one’s heart to see, for this couple was obviously in love.”

  Turning his chair towards her and raising a hand as a cue, he said: “Señora María García, muy, muy buenos días, and thank you for coming on this show. So now, we can begin, yes?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  But before she could say anything, he started reading from a sheet.

  “A longtime resident of Miami, María García y Cifuentes hailed originally from our beloved province of Pinar del Río and moved to Havana proper during that city’s golden age, in the late 1940s. There, she was a popular figure in the Havana club scene as a dancer.” (He cleared his throat, seemingly suffering from a cold.) “Performing in some of the best clubs in those heady days before the greatest debacle of Cuban history took place, she also fell passionately in love with the composer of that most famous song. She, the one and only beautiful María herself, is here today to tell us her story.”

  María did not say a word for a few moments, the host prompting her. And then, for the next seven minutes, until a commercial break, she spoke slowly, serenely about her valle, her papito, and the little tragedies that led her to Havana even while the program’s host, seemingly exasperated at times, kept interjecting, “But tell us, señora, about Nestor Castillo!”

  She finally did, shrugging. “When I met Nestor, on the street where I lived in Havana, he just reminded me of those pure souls I knew from my childhood, the kind of fellow who would never hurt anyone intentionally—he was a romantic sort, loved to sing to me, loved to dream aloud in my presence.” She sipped from a cup of water. “I knew no one else like him. He treated me as if I were made of gold, loved me as if there were no tomorrow—why I let him go to America without me, I cannot say. But he was the one, as the old songs say, who got away.”

  Then commercials, and the host, fearing that the segment might be dragging, took another approach. “Now that we’re back, may I ask you a question about the movie, which I understand you’ve seen?”

  “Of course.”

  “How did that feel to see yourself depicted on-screen?”

  She shrugged. “It was okay. I liked the actress who played me well enough—a lovely muchacha. But it wasn’t me, you understand. I just wish that someone would one day make a real story about us Cubans, by Cubans, for this country to see, entiendes?”

  And that was all. Thanking María, the program’s host, disappointed in his hope for a saucy story or two, bade her well and reminded his audience that they had just been listening to the real beautiful María, and to please refrain from further calls about the matter of her identity. As a concession to her appearance, he plugged her dance studio in Miami and made sure that she and Teresita left with two coffee mugs, emblazoned with the station’s logo. On the drive back, María did not have much to say about the experience, except that she felt as if she had been trapped in a jar or, more graphically, that someone had shoved a dedo—a finger—up her fundillo— her ass.

  “But, Mama, it was you who wanted to go on that show.”

  “I know,” María told Teresita. “I was angry that so many women were claiming to be me. But you know what? Even as I sat there talking to that very nice man, I got the feeling I was wasting my time. None of us can go back. All those memories are what? Just little dreams.”

  Nevertheless, from that single radio interview, a lot of people became interested in the real María. El Nuevo Herald, stoking the nostalgic embers of its Cuban audience, did a feature article about her for its Sunday Arts supplement. A photograph of a much younger María, her shapely body posed upon a couch-size magenta seashell in one of those glittering showgirl’s outfits, with a ridiculously high plumed fake-gem-studded hat piece balanced precariously atop her head, appeared on the front page. And, while they had provided a brief, more or less accurate biography of her life, along with some quotations, to María’s greater satisfaction, they had ended the piece with one of the verses she had written in Luis’s class: “If Cuba Were a Man.” Cristina Saralegui, who had a very popular talk show on the Univision network, invited María on her program, and while María was most flattered by her interest, she felt too intimidated about appearing on camera and (possibly) shattering her image as an eternal beauty, so she reluctantly refused. Even Don Francisco, of Sábado Gigante, had someone on his staff call María to ask if she would be willing to attend a filming of his program out of Miami, just so he could introduce her from the audience. This she almost did but changed her mind at the last minute, suffering from a terrible headache, or so she claimed. But she agreed to appear alongside the actress Talisa Soto in a print advertisement for Europa perfume, shot in South Beach for a promotion about the “Two Marías, eternally graceful and fragra
nt.” (The actress was very nice, and María liked the fact that Ms. Soto had brought along her charming Puerto Rican mother, and the fact that she, doted over and dressed up in a wonderful gown, did not come off badly in the photographs and was paid a two-thousand-dollar fee for her troubles.)

  And in her neighborhood? From just that smattering of publicity, she became a most notable figure; a lot of folks along her street who never used to, suddenly invited María and Teresita in for Sunday dinners. (These she did not mind.) If there occurred any alarming incidents, they had to do with jealousy, when some women, recognizing her in downtown Miami, glanced at María enviously, as some used to back in Havana, and her notoriety induced more men, usually much older ones, to stare at her hopefully, though rarely with lust. (She had even been approached for autographs again!) This lasted for about six months, and in that time as a local celebrity, a silly period as far as Teresita was concerned, beautiful María rarely ventured from her home without putting on a pair of large black sunglasses, even at night, as if she were a movie star, and she had taken to wearing an enormous sunhat by day, with a florid silk scarf tied around its brim, its length trailing unmistakably behind her as if it were the tail of a kite.

  But for all of that, and despite the fact that at least people now recognized her as the María of that song, María made the discovery that she simply didn’t care about being better known. Her past life with Nestor, despite that song, that novel, that movie, was most splendidly preserved in the realm of her own memories.

  What mattered to her the most? Her daughter, and her motherly concerns over Teresita’s tepid and unromantic existence. While Teresa hardly paid attention to that notion, her workweeks proceeding routinely as before, María’s own love life hadn’t turned out too badly. Once she got used to the idea of Luis, despite his plainness, his bony body, his pocked, unsymmetrical face—those eyes that always seemed to be rheumy behind wire-rimmed glasses—she fell in love with another side of him. In fact, after a while, as in a fairy tale, the more beautiful María looked at Luis, the more his homeliness began to fall away. Though he seemed hardly anything like the handsome Nestor Castillo, with his liquid, soulful eyes, María, after so many years of general indifference to men and of few expectations, came to think of that Ichabod Crane–looking Cuban as somewhat handsome. And, in time, given the little comforts she extracted from his presence, María ached more for his company.