Beautiful Maria of My Soul (10 page)

S
he 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.

Y
ou 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.

H
andsome 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 write 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.

AS THEY FEASTED ON A PLATTER OF
MARISCOS Y ARROZ
,
WITH SOME
chorizos—a paella—along with heaps of fried plantains, it was Nestor who did the talking at first.
“Soy un campesino de Oriente,”
he told her. “I’m a country boy from the east, from a quiet farm,
tú sabes,
near a little pueblo called Las Piñas, and I will tell you something, María. I was pretty happy growing up there amongst the oxen and pigs.” He was chewing on a delicate morsel and looking straight into her eyes. “Not to say that I
don’t like Havana. I just miss my family
y mi campo
—my countryside.
El aire puro
—the pure air,
el perfume de la jungla
—the perfume of the woods.”

Por Dios,
it was as if María were hearing herself speaking.

“I should have been a farmer, like
mi papá,
but I was just too sickly as a child. I wasn’t much good for anything when it came to the hard work in the fields. And because of
mi enfermedad,
I grew up holding on to my mother’s skirt. It wasn’t always easy, María. I practically never left that farm, and what learning I had, I owed to my older brother Cesar, who progressed as far as secondary school in Holguín. He taught me to read and write, and just about everything else I know.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin, refilled his glass with wine, took another bite, his expression uncertain.

“Cesar is everything to me, even if he can be a pain in the
culo.
If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Surely not to Havana. He’s always been much more adventurous than myself. He’s a first-class
músico
and used to perform with many a
conjunto
out east, as a singer mainly, and because I was always the closest to him, the youngest—we are four—he took me under his wing and started me out playing different instruments and singing.”

“And he is much older than you?” María, watching Nestor intently, asked.

“Yes, by ten years, but that didn’t stop him from taking me around as a kid to all the pueblos and plantations where his
charangas
played. Sometimes we were away for days, and that created a problem with my
papito,
who didn’t want me to waste my time.” He shook his head. “He was always fighting with Cesar, and I was caught in the middle. But you know what? Once my
hermano
got me going with the music, well, what can I say? It gets in your blood, and there’s no stopping the desire. Do you understand?”

“I do
, hombre,
” María said. “My
papito
was a
músico
too.”

“No, me diga!”
said Nestor excitedly. Gulping his wine, he asked, “Is your
papito
someone I would have heard of?”

“No, just a nobody I’m afraid,
el pobre.
He was never able to make much of a living at it, and, well”—she shrugged—“
Papito
did what he had to do to support us, until he couldn’t anymore.”

She looked so sad then, he had to say something. “Is he still alive?” Nestor asked.

“Oh, yes—he lives out in Pinar del Río.”

“Y tu mamá?”
—“And your mother?”

She just shook her head.

Out of habit, at the very thought of her
mamá,
she made a sign of the cross, but quickly. And Nestor? Instead of rolling his eyes, the way Ignacio used to whenever she crossed herself while passing in front of a church entranceway, he sucked a slip of air through his beautiful lips and, shaking his head, said, “That life can be so sad is a tragedy,
verdad
?”

He went on, María listening. Mostly about how Cesar had first put him on a stage at the age of twelve, a skinny kid playing the trumpet with a band; how it was Cesar who persuaded him to come to Havana in the first place. “That was a few years back, and you know what, María? Since arriving, we’ve made four records, and not a single centavo; we’ve played in some clubs for a few pesos, but not much else. In fact, do you know how I make my money? As a waiter at a gentleman’s club—the Explorers’ Club—have you ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“It’s not far from the Capitolio. I spend my days there looking after its members, not a Cuban among them, bringing them drinks, their cigars, their meals, and tidying up after them. They are mainly Englishmen and Americans, some Germans too. I don’t particularly like it, and I don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time, but it’s a living, you know?”

“Oh, I do
, hombre.
”

“Well, when I get home I’m always happy to leave that job behind. To be honest, it’s a miracle that I’m even here sitting with you. See, if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m not your typical
fulano.
”

Gracias a Dios
for that,
María thought, nodding.

“Take my brother Cesar. He likes to go here and there and have a good time whenever he has the chance, but me? No, I’m not that way at all. Most of the time I don’t mind staying alone in our little
solar
at night,
tranquilito, tranquilito,
as long as it’s not too hot. Then I’ll stay out just to breathe. But,” he said, and he shook his head, “I don’t need the crowds,
la locura
of the clubs, not at all.”

She just listened, unable to stop staring at Nestor’s mouth and his elegant hands. “I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me, María, but I’m perfectly happy to sit at home with my guitar and trumpet, writing my little melodies and songs. Or sometimes, if there’s a good boxing match on the radio, I’ll listen to that; and if Cesar and me have a job, playing music somewhere, I’ll certainly try my best to put on a show for the audience. But at heart, María, I’ve always been
un solitario,
a solitary sort, for whom getting to know someone has never been easy, or even worth fussing over.”

He looked off just then, not at the fellow feeding coins into the jukebox, or at the other diners, happily eating their food, but towards the ocean, where the moon had risen, sighing, and the deepest melancholy suddenly emanated from his body like black threads that entangled themselves with María’s heart, María’s soul. To watch his expression in those moments was to witness an angel, fallen from heaven to earth, who, opening his eyes, saw mainly sadness around him.

“In fact, to be honest, María, sometimes when I’m alone and can’t bear to write another note, or a single lyric—they seem so useless to me—I get so homesick that I feel like getting on a bus for Las Piñas. Just the thought of having one of my mother’s
plátano
stews makes me happy, and then I start missing all the rest; the run of the farm, the harnessing of the oxen to the plow, hanging around with the
guajiros.
You know here in Havana I mostly play trumpet and sing, but out there, my favorite instrument is a guitar—it’s so easy to carry—and, you know, you can have a pretty nice evening with a bunch of folks, just strumming some
chords and singing a few songs. And then, when you get back home, you just lie down under the mosquito netting looking at the stars through your window dreaming, without a worry in the world.” Then he sighed.
“¡Qué bueno fue!”

He went on, telling María that he just didn’t know what he was going to do with himself in life. Lately Cesar had been talking a lot about ditching Havana for New York, where they had some cousins living in a neighborhood called Harlem.

“My brother’s been crazy about New York for as long as I can remember,” Nestor told her. “He went there when he was sixteen, working on a ship, and since then it’s been his dream to return, especially now. He thinks we’d have better luck as musicians up there.”

“Do you want to go?” María asked him.

“Me? Hell no! Just the idea of living in a city like that frightens me—I mean, I can barely speak a few words of English, as it is. Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Here, we have our
guaguas
and trolleys, but you know what I’ve heard, María? They have trains, hundreds of them, that go from one point in the city to another in underground tunnels. I don’t know if I would like that much—I just don’t like the darkness at all, if I’m not in the right mood, and as I told you, María, I’m not a very adventurous sort at all; in fact, I sometimes feel like a coward,
un cobarde,
when it comes to life—”

“But you weren’t a coward with Ignacio.”

That almost made him smile.

“And this Ignacio? What’s he to you?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh”—she shrugged, as if he meant nothing to her—“just someone who was once good to me.”

LATER, WHEN THAT SWEET
MÚSICO
ESCORTED HER HOME AND
María had climbed up the stairs and begun to undress, she heard his trumpet from down below: first the melody and Nestor’s voice rising up into her window, Nestor improvising a song of love.

María, charmed by his little serenade, leaned out her window. “Nestor, but are you crazy?” she called to him.

“With you I am,” he called back, and he bowed like a gentleman. “When will I see you again?”

“Come back next Sunday, at noon,” she told him. “Maybe we’ll go to
la playa. Está bien?
”

“Okay!”

Then she sent him off into the world, Nestor, walking towards the arcades and turning every so often to see if she was still looking. While he headed home, in a state of pure joy, to the
solar
he shared with his older brother, María, examining herself as she rested in bed, touched her own dampness.