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 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 Pi?as, 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 Pi?as. 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, I don’t know you well, but I feel that love is in our destiny.
(His trumpet’s notes rising to the stars…)
Now I’m filled with the strongest desires.
(His trumpet’s notes flying towards the sea…)
Even if we’re practically strangers, I adore you already,
(His trumpet’s notes echoing against the walls…)
beyond all reason and without any doubt.
(His trumpet’s notes, so wonderful and filled with feeling, provoking, as well, a voice from another window: “Hey, you, Romeo! Cállate! Quiet down!”)
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.